Doesn’t do much to clarify the topic, does it. So, cannot coerce. Sectarian is ok. Should not be seen as endorsing because we’ve done it for so long. It isn’t really that important anyway. And besides the Town tries to spread it around–it’s just that the only religious folk in town are Christian.
We still can’t tell the line between endorsement and non-endorsement. We can’t even know whether we are now into just a coercion test to be measured by some sort of formerly-known-as-endorsement balancing of a bunch of stuff. So advising city and town councils on how to meet the current establishment standards would require what? A safe harbor would be do it non-sectarian. A slightly less safe harbor would be go ahead with the sectarian, but try to balance who does the prayer among denominations and religions formally represented in your community. Probably ok would be just one guy from one religion doing it for years on end in a sectarian manner, as long as it wasn’t coercive (whatever that might mean in this setting) and so long as some sort of indication was given, regardless of how pro forma and even insincere, that it the government was not endorsing that particular view or even religion in general. It is clear that separation is almost gone from establishment jurisprudence now and that we are deep into accommodationist mode and that neutrality means not as between religion and non-religion but only as among religious sects — in this singular sort of context. Over a third of my students report that every school day in public schools started with a prayer over the PA system in their schools. Steve -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Director of International Programs, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice http://iipsj.org Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 http://sdjlaw.org "In these words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on." Robert Frost On May 5, 2014, at 12:44 PM, Friedman, Howard M. <howard.fried...@utoledo.edu> wrote: > The Supreme Court decided Town of Greece today, upholding town's prayer > practices in a 5-4 decision. Details at Religion Clause at > http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2014/05/supreme-court-upholds-sectarian_5.html > > Howard Friedman > _______________________________________________ > To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see > http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > > Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as > private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; > people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) > forward the messages to others.
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
