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Full-Text Articles in Law
Secularization, Religiosity, And The United States Constitution, Christopher L. Eisgruber
Secularization, Religiosity, And The United States Constitution, Christopher L. Eisgruber
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
This article draws upon leading works in the sociology of religion to assess what I shall call "the secularization claim" regarding the United States. It endeavors, in particular to clarify the possible meanings of "secularization,"and then to use these conceptual refinements to examine what sort of evidence exists that the United States has been secularized. Though it is not possible to falsify every version of the secularization claim, there is little evidence to support it, especially in its most prominent and politically relevant variations. The article then goes on to offer a preliminary analysis of to what extent, if any, …
Why Religion In Politics Does Not Violate La Conception Américaine De La Laïcité, Michael J. Perry
Why Religion In Politics Does Not Violate La Conception Américaine De La Laïcité, Michael J. Perry
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
La conception Am6ricaine de la Laĭcité consists principally of a constitutional norm-the nonestablishment norm-and of the laW that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed in the course of enforcing the norm. The nonestablishment norm forbids government-both the national government and state government-to "establish" religion. American laYcit6 also consists of what we may call "the morality of liberal democracy. " My aim in this essay is to explain why religion in politics does not violate American laYcit6; more specifically, my aim is to explain why political reliance on religiously grounded morality violates neither the nonestablishment norm nor the morality of liberal …
Religious Expression And Symbolism In The American Constitutional Tradition: Government Neutrality, But Not Indifference, Daniel O. Conkle
Religious Expression And Symbolism In The American Constitutional Tradition: Government Neutrality, But Not Indifference, Daniel O. Conkle
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
In this article, I describe and analyze three principles of First Amendment doctrine. First, the Establishment Clause generally forbids governmental expression that has the purpose or effect of promoting or endorsing religion. Second, and conversely, private religious expression is broadly defined and is strongly protected by the Free Speech Clause. Third, as an implicit exception to the first principle, the government itself is sometimes permitted to engage in expression that seemingly does promote and endorse religion, but only when the expression is noncoercive, nonsectarian, and embedded within (or at least in harmony with) longstanding historical tradition. Comparing these three principles …