Religion and the Law: of Church and State and the Supreme Court - Softcover

-This is a compact study and review of Supreme Court decisions bearing on church-state issues. Most of the famous cases, and some of the minor ones, are touched on in this informed treatment... [I]t is good to have in book form this forthright essay which can contribute to greater precision of thought in a confused area.- --Robert T. Handy, Church History -Professor Kurland's highly compressed but lucid style is designed to isolate the constitutional issues that define the meaning and application of the religion clauses of the First Amendment as construed by the United States Supreme Court... Perhaps because it often immerses itself in empirical detail, our century is suspicious of histories written to exhibit undeviating, unilinear progress. Law is no exception, and Kurland's book presents American judicial experience with the First Amendment as a checkered history of radical inconsistency.- --Leslie Edward Van Marter, Ethics -The scholar interested in law will find Philip B. Kurland's Religion and the Law: Of Church and State and the Supreme Court stimulating. The author advances the thesis that the freedom and separation clauses of the First Amendment must be regarded -as a single precept that government cannot utilize religion as a standard for action or inaction,- and that the Amendment prohibits -classification in terms of religion.-- --Emil Oberholzer, Jr., American Quarterly "This is a compact study and review of Supreme Court decisions bearing on church-state issues. Most of the famous cases, and some of the minor ones, are touched on in this informed treatment... [I]t is good to have in book form this forthright essay which can contribute to greater precision of thought in a confused area." --Robert T. Handy, Church History "Professor Kurland's highly compressed but lucid style is designed to isolate the constitutional issues that define the meaning and application of the religion clauses of the First Amendment as construed by the United States Supreme Court... Perhaps because it often immerses itself in empirical detail, our century is suspicious of histories written to exhibit undeviating, unilinear progress. Law is no exception, and Kurland's book presents American judicial experience with the First Amendment as a checkered history of radical inconsistency." --Leslie Edward Van Marter, Ethics "The scholar interested in law will find Philip B. Kurland's Religion and the Law: Of Church and State and the Supreme Court stimulating. The author advances the thesis that the freedom and separation clauses of the First Amendment must be regarded "as a single precept that government cannot utilize religion as a standard for action or inaction," and that the Amendment prohibits "classification in terms of religion."" --Emil Oberholzer, Jr., American Quarterly "This is a compact study and review of Supreme Court decisions bearing on church-state issues. Most of the famous cases, and some of the minor ones, are touched on in this informed treatment... [I]t is good to have in book form this forthright essay which can contribute to greater precision of thought in a confused area." --Robert T. Handy, Church History "Professor Kurland's highly compressed but lucid style is designed to isolate the constitutional issues that define the meaning and application of the religion clauses of the First Amendment as construed by the United States Supreme Court... Perhaps because it often immerses itself in empirical detail, our century is suspicious of histories written to exhibit undeviating, unilinear progress. Law is no exception, and Kurland's book presents American judicial experience with the First Amendment as a checkered history of radical inconsistency." --Leslie Edward Van Marter, Ethics "The scholar interested in law will find Philip B. Kurland's Religion and the Law: Of Church and State and the Supreme Court stimulating. The author advances the thesis that the freedom and separation clauses of the First Amendment must be regarded "as a single precept that government cannot utilize religion as a standard for action or inaction," and that the Amendment prohibits "classification in terms of religion."" --Emil Oberholzer, Jr., American Quarterly

There are few issues as controversial as where to draw the line between church and state. The framers of the Constitution's Bill of Rights began their blueprint for freedom by drawing exactly such a line. The first clauses of the First Amendment provide: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The justices of the Supreme Court have not been wanting for advice from self-appointed guardians. The difficulty with such advice is that the contestants are more convincing when they criticize their opponents' interpretations than when they seek to establish the validity of their own.Religion and the Law examines the actions and words of the Supreme Court in applying constitutional language to the controversies that have come before it. Lest such an effort be reduced to recitation, these cases are measured against a "neutral principle" that will give the most appropriate scope to the religion clauses in such a manner as to provide guidance for legislatures and courts. This neutral principle has been framed in reliance on the Aristotelian axiom that "it is the mark of an educated man to seek precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits."One of the fundamental difficulties with the contemporary discussion of the "hot button" issue has been the failure to distinguish two separable problems: the constitutional issue--in the narrow sense of the meaning to be given to the language of the First Amendment by the Supreme Court--and the broader question of the ideal relationship that should exist between church and state. This is a classic study by one of the great theorists of American constitutional law.