CHURCH, STATE, AND FREEDOM: A REVIEW

Authors

Paul G. Kauper, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

The Supreme Court's opinion in the Everson case declaring that the separation-of-church-and-state limitation derived from the First Amendment was equally applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment opened up new vistas on the church-state problems in this country. Opponents of released time programs were quick to seize the opening thus afforded as evidenced by the litigation in the McCollum and Zorach cases. And even before the Everson case reached it, the Supreme Court, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of Jehovah's Witnesses, had been engaged at length with the task of defining the dimensions of religious freedom as secured by the Fourteenth Amendment. A gratifying feature of this legal development was the stimulation of further research in this area by interested scholars. Anson Phelps Stokes' monumental three-volume work, Church and State in the United States appeared in 1950. Wilfrid Parsons' The First Freedom and James Milton O'Neill's Religion and Education under the Constitution, both critical of the general ideas expressed in the Everson opinion and the results portended by it, appeared in 1948 and 1949, respectively. A series of articles appeared simultaneously in the law journals.

Recommended Citation

Paul G. Kauper, CHURCH, STATE, AND FREEDOM: A REVIEW, 52 Mich. L. Rev. 829 (1954).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol52/iss6/3