Religion Law Commons^™

Church And State In The States, G. Alan Tarr

Washington Law Review

In many state constitutions, the provisions dealing with the relationship of church and state differ substantially from the federal establishment clause. In this Article, Professor Tarr demonstrates that relying on the state constitutional guarantees may lead to markedly different results than would obtain under the first amendment. He argues that state constitutional provisions very often are ignored, apparently because practitioners mistakenly believe that state provisions merely repeat the strictures of the first amendment. Professor Tarr maintains that this is unfortunate and untrue, because our constitutional system allows a state constitution to provide for less, equal, or greater separation of church …