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Pleasant Grove V. Summum: Losing The Battle To Win The War, Ian C. Bartrum
Pleasant Grove V. Summum: Losing The Battle To Win The War, Ian C. Bartrum
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This short essay explores the potential doctrinal implications of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Pleasant Grove v. Summum.
The Constitutional Structure Of Disestablishment, Ian C. Bartrum
The Constitutional Structure Of Disestablishment, Ian C. Bartrum
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This article proceeds in the structuralist tradition, which Professor Charles Black describes as "the method of inference from the structure and relationships created by the Constitution." The article takes a structural approach to the Establishment Clause: it reexamines the theoretical foundations of disestablishment, and infers a constitutional structure designed to create a dialectical relationship between political institutions and social institutions. The structural thesis requires that our political institutions safeguard individual liberty of conscience by bracketing all religious questions. The antithesis ensures the existence of free and independent social organizations dedicated to building public virtue. The article then applies the structural …
Brief Response To Attorney Albright's Article, Peter Brandon Bayer
Brief Response To Attorney Albright's Article, Peter Brandon Bayer
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This article is a brief response to another article arguing that the words “under God” do not render the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. Attorney D. Chris Allbright’s provocative plea that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is insufficiently religious to offend contemporary Establishment Clause principles rests on three wobbly premises: (1) a limited perspective of some of the Framers, one which the Supreme Court rightly has eschewed; (2) Supreme Court dicta reflecting at best certain justices’ cursory suppositions about the religiosity of the words “under God;” and, (3) the wholly irrelevant, and possibly inaccurate argument that the …