One of the most contentious issues in constitutional law is whether governmental action amounts to “an establishment of religion” in violation of the First Amendment. For the past fifty years, the Court has often, but not always, resolved Establishment Clause cases using the three-pronged test established by Lemon v. Kurtzman. Under the Lemon test, a court must ask…
This article is part of our “Law and Religion Under Pressure: A One-Year Pandemic Retrospective” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Constitutional theory and theology often intersect within a society. Theology may inform and influence constitutional assumptions and constitutional theory may shape some aspects of a religious sect’s theology.…
Constitutional Theology is the intersection of theology with constitutional theory. Constitutional Theology recognizes that the constitutional design will reflect society’s beliefs about the nature of humanity or those who rule. At the same time, it acknowledges that, if the constitutional system is to work, a faith’s interactions with the larger society must echo the constitutional…
We the People … in order … to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Because neither the People nor their leaders are angels, the Constitution reflects a Calvinist theological perspective and embodies “obsessive distrust of government — all government…
This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is…
“The Blaine Amendment was ‘born of bigotry.”’ Reasonable people can certainly disagree over whether Chief Justice John Roberts’ forceful words in the opinion of the five-to-four judgement in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Taxation, which produced seven different opinions, was the stake through the heart of the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that brought their jurisprudential reign…