Digital Commons Network^™

Edwards V. Aguillard: Court History And Implications For Legislation, Wendy Call

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

An affirmative chorus rose in the 1981 Louisiana Legislature to enact the "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction" Act. This statute, which required public school teachers to give equal time to creation- and evolution-science, set in motion a chain of litigation with the momentum to reach the Supreme Court of the United States as Edwards v. Aguillard. Rooted in more than a century of religious controversy surrounding Darwin's The Origin of Species, the threat of religious-educational enmeshment brought Edwards to the threshold of First Amendment interpretation. Although Louisiana's Balanced Treatment Act was not upheld as constitutional …