Law Commons^™

State Funding Of Devotional Studies: A Failed Jurisprudence That Has Lost Its Moorings, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The Court’s attitude toward the public funding of devotional studies can best be described as ambivalent. Not long ago, devotional studies were viewed as one of the few kinds of study that the state clearly could not fund. Then, the Court did an about-face, implying that public funding of devotional studies does not violate constitutional guarantees, because that kind of study cannot be distinguished for constitutional purposes from other kinds of permissibly funded areas of study. Still more recently, the Court has changed course yet again, suggesting that states may but need not refuse to fund such studies, reverting to …

Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Illusory Safeguards Against Funding Pervasively Sectarian Institutions Of Higher Learning, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Illusory Safeguards against Funding Pervasively Sectarian Institutions of Higher Learning

Tilton v. Richardson, Hunt v. McNair, and Roemer v. Board of Public Works are often thought to offer a coherent view of the Establishment Clause limitations on funding religiously affiliated institutions of higher learning. But the decisions themselves offer inconsistent analyses of Establishment Clause limitations and, further, were the analyses in these cases applied more generally, Establishment Clause guarantees would be even less robust than they are currently thought to be.

The difficulties for the Court in offering a coherent approach to public funding …

Repudiating Everson: On Buses, Books, And Teaching Articles Of Faith, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

Ever since deciding Everson v. Board of Education, the Court has wrestled with the proper way to characterize the limitations imposed on the states by the Establishment Clause. Many of the cases have involved the extent to which the state can give aid to the parents of children attending primary and secondary sectarian schools. The Court’s understanding of the limits on this kind of aid has changed markedly over the past sixty years, having first involved an analysis of the degree to which the state would be aiding religious teaching and then having changed to an analysis of whether the …