These questions are addressed here through a careful selection and reassessment of a dozen very interesting and controversial rulings. Scott Rutledge, JD, argues that the Justices have handed down decisions which are essentially religious in...

These questions are addressed here through a careful selection and reassessment of a dozen very interesting and controversial rulings. Scott Rutledge, JD, argues that the Justices have handed down decisions which are essentially religious in character, while speaking the language of constitutional judgment. The main role of the Supreme Court is to ensure that our laws conform to the rules set forth in the US Constitution. When the Supreme Court issues a supposedly constitutional decision lacking any persuasive, sometimes even any plausible connection to the text of the Constitution, what is happening? How should we understand the role in American government which the Justices are claiming as their own? A great many citizens of the United States are perplexed, or distressed ; or occasionally inspired ; by the nation's highest tribunal. The Court's political power rivals that of Congress and the Presidency. The Justices;¢ ambitions seem vast. And so the nomination and appointment of a new Justice, historically uncontroversial, has become instead an occasion for alarm and struggle.

The statesmen who founded the American Republic managed to put a case for plural government before the world with exceptional force and clarity. They offered a detailed and pragmatic plan, one quite disappointing to any partisan of governmental...

The statesmen who founded the American Republic managed to put a case for plural government before the world with exceptional force and clarity. They offered a detailed and pragmatic plan, one quite disappointing to any partisan of governmental uniformity, for the preservation of many ways, legal, political, and religious, among the American people.One topic, moreover, illuminated especially well the novelties introduced in 1787. One topic, the first to be addressed in the Bill of Rights of 1791, shone the brightest of lights upon the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of the United States.In their approach to that most sensitive of concerns, religion, the American founders created something new under the sun.