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Imagining The Past And Remembering The Future: The Supreme Court's History Of The Establishment Clause, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Our Framers through the Establishment Clause sought to prevent the government from preferring one religious sect to another. However, the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education abandoned that meaning of nonestablishment and created a general prohibition on all nondiscriminatory aid to religion, a decision later reinforced in Lemon v. Kurtzman. This Article discusses the Founder’s worldview and looks at other Establishment Clause cases to illustrate that the historical evidence is inconsistent with Everson. Rather, the founders intended to assure that religion would be aided only on a nondiscriminatory, or sect-neutral, basis and does not stand for …