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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Endorsement Court, Jay D. Wexler
The Endorsement Court, Jay D. Wexler
Faculty Scholarship
Since 1986, when William H. Rehnquist was confirmed as the sixteenth Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court has virtually rewritten the entire law regarding the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. With respect to the Free Exercise Clause, the Court, in its 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, reversed years of jurisprudence and held that the First Amendment does not entitle religious believers to exemptions from neutral laws of general application. On the Establishment Clause side, the Court recently overturned a series of its earlier decisions on its way to creating a body of law quite amenable to the …
Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler
Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler
Faculty Scholarship
When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Dover school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the Establishment Clause, ID opponents were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. The decision held that the policy was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when viewed both from a reasonable Dover student's perspective as well as from the perspective of a reasonable adult in the Dover community. It also held that the policy was adopted for a religious purpose, …
Too Much, Too Little: Religion In The Public Schools, Jay D. Wexler
Too Much, Too Little: Religion In The Public Schools, Jay D. Wexler
Faculty Scholarship
The current state of religion in the nation's public schools is odd indeed. On the one hand, the courts have consistently held that public school teachers may not lead their students in an organized prayer. Yet on the other hand, most people seem to agree that there is no problem with those same teachers leading their students in the Pledge of Allegiance, an exercise that asks students on a daily basis, not only to explicitly recognize the existence of a single god, but also to link the nation's very identity to that highly contested theological proposition. Likewise, despite the fact …