How Far Does the Constitution Separate Church and State?

Lynford A. Lardner

American Political Science Review, 1951, vol. 45, issue 1, 110-132

Abstract: Several years ago the Supreme Court of the United States touched off a flood of controversy when it made two attempts to breathe life and meaning into the constitutional injunction that “Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In the first case, Everson v. Board of Education, a bare majority decided that a New Jersey township did not violate the injunction when it permitted the use of public funds to pay the transportation charges on common carriers for children attending public and Catholic schools. But in the second case, McCollum v. Board of Education, a majority of eight decided that the Constitution was violated when the Board of Education of Champaign, Illinois, made provisions for a short weekly period of religious instruction to be given during school hours to children whose parents requested that they be permitted to attend these classes. The instruction available during the school year 1945–1946 was either Roman Catholic, Jewish, Protestant or Interdenominational, the instructors being provided at no expense to the Board of Education by the religious groups concerned.

Date: 1951
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:45:y:1951:i:01:p:110-132_06

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().