Judges Commons^™

God, Civic Virtue, And The American Way: Reconstructing Engel, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

If ever a decision embodied the heroic, counter majoritarian function we romantically ascribe to judicial review, it was the 1962 decision that struck down school prayer-Engel v. Vitale. Engel provoked more outrage, more congres- sionalattemptsto overturnit, andmoreattackson theJusticesthanperhapsany other decision in Supreme Court history. Indeed, Engel's counter majoritarian narrative is so strong that scholars have largely assumed that the historical record supports our romanticized conception of the case.Itdoesnot. Usingprimary source materials, this Article reconstructs the story of Engel, then explores the implicationsof this reconstructednarrative. Engel is not the countermajoritarian case it seems, but recognizing that allows us to see Engel …