At Civitas Outlook, Josh Blackman: The Establishment Clause at the Second Founding. From the introduction:
… [T]he relevant time frame to best understand the Establishment Clause for state religion cases should be 1868, not 1791.
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During the late 1860s, the Reconstruction government worked closely to promote a bible-centric public education system in the South. In a forthcoming article, I unearth many documents from the Freedmen’s Bureau that have only recently been digitized. The record is fairly clear: a federal government agency, headed by military chaplains, worked with religious groups to establish schools in the South, and the curriculum in those classes included bible readings and prayers.
The Supreme Court currently has a cert petition pending in a challenge to Texas’s Ten Commandments law. The state requires the posting of the Decalogue on classroom walls. Much of the briefing, so far, has focused on religion in public during the first founding. But that case also should consider the status of religion in schools during the second founding when the Establishment Clause was arguably extended to the states.
Posted at 6:16 AM