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The Establishment Clause And Religious Expression In Governmental Settings: Four Variables In Search Of A Standard, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In his controversial but controlling opinion in Van Orden v. Perry, Justice Breyer rejected an Establishment Clause challenge to a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capital. Breyer argued that existing Establishment Clause formulations, including the Lemon and endorsement tests, were inadequate to resolve the case, so he relied instead on legal judgment, an approach informed by doctrinal and policy considerations but not controlled by any formal test. In this Essay, I suggest that Justice Breyer may have been right in Van Orden-if not in his result, then at least in approaching the question as he …