Law Commons^™

A Coherent Methodology For First Amendment Speech And Religion Clause Cases, Thomas R. Mccoy

Vanderbilt Law Review

It seems clear that any deliberate effort by government to impose religious orthodoxy will be held unconstitutional per se. A religiously motivated restriction on disfavored religious practices will be held to violate the Free Exercise Clause. Similarly, a religiously motivated attempt to promote or subsidize favored religious practices will be held to violate the Establishment Clause. These complimentary restrictions are now so ingrained in our political culture that the legislatures rarely transgress them.

The problem that has bedeviled the Supreme Court for many years is that government regulatory schemes and benefit programs designed to serve purely nonreligious objectives inevitably impact …

Old Wine In New Bottles: The Constitutional Status Of Unconstitutional Speech, Mark A. Graber

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article explores whether contemporary advocates of restrictions on bigoted expression have more in common with contemporary advocates of broad First Amendment rights or with past censors. The critical theorists who would ban some hate speech rely heavily on the equal citizenship principles that radical civil libertarians believe justify almost absolute speech rights. Past censors, however, also relied heavily on principles that libertarians in their generation thought justified almost absolute speech rights. The First Amendment, past and present censors argue, does not fully protect speech in- consistent with what they believe are basic constitutional values. This claim repudiates a basic …

The Constitutionality Of Student-Led Prayer At Public School Graduation Ceremonies, Johanna J. Raimond

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Supreme Court consistently has held that it is unconstitutional to pray in public school classrooms.' Until 1992, however, the Court had never addressed the issue of prayer at a public school graduation ceremony. Prior to the Court's ruling, public school districts across the country regularly included a prayer of some variety in their graduation programs. In June 1992, the Supreme Court finally addressed this longstanding practice. In Lee v. Weisman, the Court held that the Providence, Rhode Island school district violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by permitting a rabbi to offer an invocation and benediction at …