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3 - Everson: A Case of Premeditated Law Office History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Donald L. Drakeman
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Justice Rutledge: “You can't draw the line between a little and a lot of pregnancy. Every religious institution in the country will be reaching into the hopper for help if you sustain this.”

Justice Black: “I won't go in a whole hogically way to contribute to a church – only this far.”

From the Supreme Court's Conference in Everson v. Board of Education

Introduction

For nearly 150 years, from the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1789 until the middle of the twentieth century, the First Amendment's establishment clause, which begins, “Congress shall make no law,” was taken at its word as a limitation only on the federal government. Testimonials to that effect come from the most distinguished sources, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the nineteenth-century Supreme Court. When Thomas Jefferson's second inaugural speech touched on the issue of the relationship of religion and government, he made a point of saying that the entire topic had been reserved to the states. The speech's language on this point was originally drafted by James Madison, Jefferson's compatriot in enacting the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Liberty; Madison's words read, “religious exercises, could…be neither controuled nor prescribed by us. They have…been left as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline acknowledged within the several States.” Then in 1845, the Supreme Court issued an opinion holding that “[t]he Constitution makes no provision for protecting the citizens of the respective states in their religious liberties.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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