Establishment Clause
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 370 U.S. 421 - Engel v. Vitale · 1962Most cited · 1,473 citing opinions
the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
How often courts cite the case defining “Establishment Clause”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “Establishment Clause” — 1,468 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1962–1962
- ORIGINAL
The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not.
versus Free Exercise Clause