Law Commons^™

Privatizing And Publicizing Speech, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When and how should governments be permitted to use private-law mechanisms to manage their public-law obligations? This short piece poses that question in the context of Summum, which the Supreme Court decided earlier this year, and Buono, which it will hear in the fall. In both cases, the government manipulated formal property rules in order to fend off constitutional challenges. In Summum, the government took ownership of a religious symbol in the face of a free speech challenge, while in Buono it shed ownership of land containing another sectarian symbol in an effort to moot an Establishment Clause problem. Although …

A New Originalism: Adoption Of A Grammatical Interpretive Approach To Establishment Clause Jurisprudence After District Of Columbia V. Helle, Christopher A. Boyko

Cleveland State Law Review

This thesis proposes an approach to Establishment Clause jurisprudence (and one applicable to constitutional interpretation as a whole) that maintains fidelity to the Constitution by confining the application and interpretation of explicit text to the strictures of well-established norms of grammar and usage. It will begin by analyzing the disparities created through the addition or substitution of super-textual language to the clause through the use of surrogate concepts, and will demonstrate that any such method of constitutional adjudication becomes unworkable and incoherent once such tests utilize surrogate concepts and terminology. Through grammatical exegesis will emerge the theory that the Religion …

Standing, Spending, And Separation: How The No-Establishment Rule Does (And Does Not) Protect Conscience, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause” is widely thought to protect “conscience.” Does it? If so, how? It is proposed in this paper that the no-establishment rule does indeed promote and protect religious liberty, and does safeguard conscience, but not (or, at least, not only) in the way most people think it does, namely, by sparing those who object from the asserted injury to their conscience caused by public funding of religious activity.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation - a case in which the Justices limited taxpayer standing to bring Establishment Clause claims - reminds …