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Actually, the Establishment clause does not make it clear, and in fact, only prevented the US Congress (not the states) from establishing an official religion.
by viggity 12y ago
Actually, the Establishment clause does not make it clear, and in fact, only prevented the US Congress (not the states) from establishing an official religion. It wasn't until the supreme court Incorporated the establishment clause in 1947 that states were prevented from establishing an official state religion. In fact, at least six states had official religions at the time of the founding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause#Incorporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause#Incorporat...
The second paragraph in the Incorporation clause discusses my points above.
- morgante 12y agoYes, it's true that the Establishment Clause did not originally apply to the states. However, since incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment, the majority of precent applies it to the states as well. (I've written dozens of papers on the Establishment Clause.)
- tzs 12y agoRon Paul tried to effectively reverse that, three times, by introducing legislation that prohibited the Supreme Court and any other Federal court from hearing cases involving it and the laws, policies, or regulations of any state. That would work because aside from a small number of case types the Constitution explicitly says the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over, it is Congress that decides the bounds of Federal jurisdiction. Here was one of Ron Paul's bills on this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH:/ http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH:/