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Full-Text Articles in Law

Hugo Black’S Wall Of Separation Of Church And State, Garland L. Goff Jr. Apr 2012

Hugo Black’S Wall Of Separation Of Church And State, Garland L. Goff Jr.

Senior Honors Theses

Justice Hugo Black and his 1947 opinion in Everson v. Board of Education. In this opinion, Justice Black quoted Thomas Jefferson’s term “wall of separation” and further added his own opinion that the wall must be high and impregnable. This meant that from that day forward the separation of church and state would be applied to all aspects of government not just the federal level. Several key factors in Justice Black’s background inclined the Justice to rule unfavorably against religion. First, it is a known fact that Justice Black was a member of the KKK, an organization that was known …


A Look At The Establishment Clause Through The Prism Of Religious Perspectives: Religious Majorities, Religious Minorities, And Nonbelievers, Samuel J. Levine Jan 2012

A Look At The Establishment Clause Through The Prism Of Religious Perspectives: Religious Majorities, Religious Minorities, And Nonbelievers, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

This article traces the Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence through several decades, examining a number of landmark cases through the prism of religious minority perspectives. In so doing, the Article aims to demonstrate the significance of religious perspectives in the development of both the doctrine and rhetoric of the Establishment Clause. The Article then turns to the current state of the Establishment Clause, expanding upon these themes through a close look at the 2004 and 2005 cases Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, Van Orden v. Perry, and McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. The article concludes …