Law Commons^™

Constitutional Gravity: A Unitary Theory Of Alternative Dispute Resolution And Public Civil Justice, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

It is often said that America's founding was an experiment in government. Certainly few features of the American constitutional settlement left more to future chance--and were more of a break with existing European patterns--than the Establishment Clause set out in the First Amendment. The new Republic sought to rely on transcendent principles to justify its unpre-cedented advancements in human liberty. Concurrently, the Founders reject ed any official or fixed formulation of these principles, for no public credo was to be established by law. So it is more than just a little ironic that the nation's most cherished human rights depend …