This decision comes at a very useful time if it goes up to the Supreme Court. Maybe if Alito is sitting there when it is heard, Roberts and the other conservatives can kick out that Wall of Separation cr*p for good.
All the Constitution says is that "there shall be no establishment of religion." That's very different from a wall of separation. And if Jefferson used that phrase in a letter, so what? As Scalia says, you don't go by someone's eccentric private opinion when you interpret the words, you go by what the words meant to an average, educated person at the time they were written.
And at the time it was written, established meant exactly that--that there should be no official, established national church like the Church of England.
Cicero, I have half a hunch that the addition of Roberts and the possible addition of Alito to the SC had some psychological influence on the members of the Court of Appeals in this decision.
Judges don't like to be overruled or their decisions overturned. Now that we have a pretty good chance for a conservative Supreme Court, we may see a goodly number of conservative courts and judges throughout the country begin to come out of the shadows. Every judge in the U.S. of A. is not a liberal. We may be seeing the start of a more courageous trend with this unanimous (yikes!) decision.
Leni
Jefferson himself did a lot of things that would violate the wall doctrine, so it is clear he himself didn't belive in it.
It just was an illustration of religious freedom in a letter, nothing more.
And even further, it is my understanding that the main purpose for prohibiting a national religion was so as to not interfere with the official religions of each of the states.
No it doesn't. Real it ALL
"All the Constitution says is that "there shall be no establishment of religion." That's very different from a wall of separation. And if Jefferson used that phrase in a letter..."
Jefferson's words were taken out of context to make the point for the ACLU. See http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpost.html
Actually, no, it did not. Not in the American context. In fact I don't think there was a single state at the time the Constitution was adopted that had a single establishment, i.e. establishing one and only one church or denomination. They all had either multiple or general establishments. That is either more than one church was recognized as official or received direct government aid (multiple establishment), or there was some scheme along the lines of a religion tax which might be mandatory, but the person paying the tax could determine the church that received it (general establishment).
Single establishments were not the norm even during most of the Colonial era. Even where they existed pro-forma they were soon "multiplized" or generalized de-facto.
Besides, if congress had meant what you say they meant, why didn't they just say so? Why didn't the use the term "national religion" instead of the naked and general term "religion"? The "national religion" language was considered and was rejected. They specifically chose the most general language possible.
From the original post: "Our nation's history is replete with governmental acknowledgment and in some cases, accommodation of religion."
From Cicero: "And at the time it was written, established meant exactly that--that there should be no official, established national church like the Church of England."
It went far beyond accomodation of religion. The emphasis should be on the word *national,* found in your post. A number of states had established state religions at the time of ratification, and continued to keep those official state religions for many decades after the ratification of the Constitution. This alone makes it clear that the only thing that the states intended when they ratified the Constitution was that there be no *national* religion.
It was understood that the states were perfectly free to have established religions, but that the federal government could not override the individual established religion of a given state, or require one of a state that chose to have no state religion.
The idea of a religionless society or a "wall of separation" was of course the individual idea of a very few back then, and was not what was ratified.
Ever notice how the ACLU and its minions quietly gloss over the fact that Jefferson wrote something else, and not the Constitution?
Oh wow... I really hope the ACLU does appeal it to the SCOTUS. What are the odds they won't though, thinking they may not get the decision they want?
Indeed. Jefferson was in France when the Constitution was written, so even in his own day he was hardly an expert on it. Then, despite all his utterings about small government, he was the first president to massively expand the powers of the federal government beyond what the Constitution provided. He also allowed the federal courts to grab far more power than the Constitution gave them, and we've been paying the price ever since.