Samuel L. Bray (University of Chicago Law School), Nathan S. Chapman (University of Georgia School of Law) & Brent Strawn (Duke University) have posted Prescribing Religion: The Ten Commandments on Classroom Walls (80 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Several states have recently enacted laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools. This Article considers the application of the Establishment Clause to these statutes. First, it examines the history of England and its North American colonies to show that a central feature of an established religion was the government’s prescription of particular religious beliefs and practices. Second, it demonstrates that choosing one version of the Ten Commandments to display in public school classrooms necessarily specifies particular religious beliefs. This is in contrast to expressions of generic providentialism that the founders understood the Establishment Clause to permit. Applying a historical understanding of an “Establishment of Religion” and considering the contexts of each mandated display, we conclude that several of these statutes are unconstitutional.
Posted at 6:02 AM