The Courts, The Constitution, & Religion: Leading Supreme Court Cases on Church and State » (1st Edition)

It has been sixty years since the Supreme Court first addressed the subject of "Church and State" under what has come to be known as the incorporation doctrine, interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution as extending the First Amendment "religion clauses" to state and municipal actions.. "Edited with a carefully prepared historical introduction that places the First Amendment in the context of eighteenth-century debates over religious freedom, The Constitution and Religion offers a fresh analysis of the amendment's origins. In a collection of fifty recent and historical decisions concerning freedom of religion, Robert S. Alley places readers at the heart of the national debate, presenting the cases without editorial comment. By carefully extracting extended footnoting and citations that, in the full text, tend to separate legal opinions from public interest, Alley has cast the justices' thoughts in a format that captures the drama and, frequently, the eloquence of the prose that is, for now, the law of the land.

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A collection of primary documents in which Alley (humanities, U. of Richmond) offers no commentary of his own besides selection. For 50 US Supreme Court cases on relations between the church and state over the past three decades, he presents the full text of the decisions, the vote of the justices, and selected dissenting opinions. The cases involve prayer in state legislatures, the pledge of allegiance, displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings, religious displays on public property, school prayers, vouchers for religious schools, religion in science class, and other topics. He includes no index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)