The Marsh opinion justified legislative prayer on the basis of a very crude version of a historical argument -- the first Congress did this, and it's been done consistently since -- not really on the basis of a coherent, generalizable analytical principle such as "it's just solemnization" or "it's just a personal act by the legislators, not directed at the public." For that reason, it's difficult to know how to apply Marsh in a principled or convincing way, as I think this decision dramatizes. With respect to the "it's just for the legislators, not directed at the public" rationale, I have more trouble accepting it in this kind of case than in Marsh. At a county board meeting, unlike a session of Congress, regular citizens often must attend in order to present some kind of proposal or petition to the board: so they have to listen to the prayer (and probably refrain from walking out on it, so as not to offend the board members). And if the prayer is really just for the board members, then since there's typically only a few of them (again unlike Congress), they could have it together before entering the room and starting the public meeting. Finally, if the prayer is truly just the board members personally asking for guidance together, then they ought to be able to have a highly "sectarian" prayer if they all agree on it, rather than being constrained by the "nonsectarian monotheism" requirement that the Fourth Circuit has set forth in its cases. Tom Berg, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
_____ From: David Cruz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 4/15/2005 1:13 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Discrimination Against Wiccans; Simpson v. Chesterfield County On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, West, Ellis wrote: > [snip] If, however, the reason for these prayers > is because the members of the Board truly want divine guidance or > blessing from the deity in which they believe, the God of the > Judeo-Christian faith, [snip] Does that count as a *secular* purpose?? I thought legislative prayers were typically justified on solemnization rationale. David B. Cruz Professor of Law University of Southern California Law School Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071 U.S.A. _______________________________________________ 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 <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.
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