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The Political Origins Of Secular Public Education: The New York City School Controversy, 1840-1842, Ian C. Bartrum
The Political Origins Of Secular Public Education: The New York City School Controversy, 1840-1842, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
THE ORIGINS OF SECULAR PUBLIC EDUCATION: THE NEW YORK SCHOOL CONTROVERSY, 1840-1842 As the title suggests, this article explores the historical origins of secular public education, with a particular focus on the controversy surrounding the Catholic petitions for school funding in nineteenth-century New York City. The article first examines the development of Protestant nonsectarian common schools in the northeast, then turns to the New York controversy in detail, and finally explores that controversy’s legacy in state constitutions and the Supreme Court. It is particularly concerned with two ideas generated in New York: (1) Bishop John Hughes’ objection to nonsectarianism as …
Of Historiography And Constitutional Principle: Jefferson's Reply To The Danbury Baptists, Ian C. Bartrum
Of Historiography And Constitutional Principle: Jefferson's Reply To The Danbury Baptists, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This article examines the ways that the Supreme Court has used Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists ("a wall of separation between church and state") as a rhetorical symbol. It finds the letter at the heart of the Court's debate over competing theories of religious neutrality. The article then explores the treatment the letter has received in several leading academic histories, and concludes that professional historians have largely tailored their arguments to match the Supreme Court's ideological divide. The article concludes that, because the goals of historical argument and legal argument are fundamentally different, this "incestual" kind of relationship …
Metaphors And Modalities: Meditations On Bobbitt's Theory Of The Constitution, Ian C. Bartrum
Metaphors And Modalities: Meditations On Bobbitt's Theory Of The Constitution, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This article builds on Philip Bobbitt’s remarkable work in constitutional theory, which posits a practice-based constitution based in six accepted “modalities” of argument. I attempt to supplement Bobbitt’s theory—which has a static and exclusive quality to it—with an account of interpretive evolution based in Max Black’s interaction theory of metaphors. I suggest that we can (and do) create constitutional metaphors by deliberately overlapping Bobbitt’s modalities of argument, and that through these creative acts we can grow the practice of American constitutionalism. I then present case studies of this metaphoric process at work in three fields of constitutional practice: from constitutional …