Does the Establishment Clause Require Religion to Be Confined to the Private Sphere?

Through the first four decades or so of the U.S. Supreme Court’s church-state jurisprudence the Court generally sought to confine religion to the private sphere, on the grounds that the establishment clause requires such a result. While the Rehnquist Court has been more open to religion in the public sphere than previous Courts, the claim that the establishment clause requires religion to be restricted to the private sphere retains strong support among a minority of Supreme Court justices. Witness Justice Souter’s fierce objection, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), to the Court’s approval of the use of publicly funded tuition vouchers in religious schools, proclaiming not only that the constitution relegates religion to the private sphere but that religious freedom itself is partly premised on the notion that religion be kept “relatively private.” The aim of this paper is to critically examine the rationales—respect for rights of conscience, to protect the health and vigor of religion, and the preservation of social peace—upon which the privatization principle rests. While these are appropriate issues to focus upon, the “privatization” justices do so abstractly and uncritically, with little attention to the lived, historical reality of religion’s involvement in the public sphere. Analyzing these issues in a highly abstract fashion, I argue, leads those justices who wish to confine religion to the private sphere to ignore real issues of religious liberty. Consequently, instead of a searching inquiry into how, amidst deep religious diversity and an ever expanding regulatory state, religious liberty can be protected for all, we get abstract, conclusory arguments about the purported objective of the establishment clause

Bait shrimp fishery of Biscayne Bay

A small but valuable live bait shrimp fishery has existed in Biscayne Bay since at least the early 1950s. In recent years there has been increasing pressure from recreational fishing and environmental groups to eliminate this fishery from the Bay because the fishing activity is generally thought to be deleterious to the environment and/or destructive to juvenile game fish. This study was initiated to update the existing knowledge of the bait shrimp fishery in Biscayne Bay and document historical trends in number of participants, fishing methods, fishing area, seasonality, total catch, catch-per-unit-effort, disposition of the catch, and economics of the industry. (21pp.

Atlas of artificial reefs in Florida, Fifth edition

The Atlas of Artificial Reefs in Florida -- Fifth Edition, provides the public with information to locate artificial reefs constructed for fisheries enhancement, and for the enjoyment of fishing and diving by residents and visitors to Florida's coastal waters. This edition expands on the information that was included in earlier versions by adding thirty-five new permitted sites and 250 additional components deployed on these and many pre-existing sites. A variety of sources of information have been utilized to acquire the most accurate and complete information in order to present the most up-to-date artificial reef listing possible for Florida. With the magnitude of reef construction over the last 30 years there are potential opportunities for inaccurate information, especially with nearly 900 component entries on approximately 364 permitted sites. (59pp.

Comparing the Environmental and Social Factors of UK and US Firms: A Case for Stringent Disclosure Regulation

Variation in “good” corporate behavior can be observed across countries. Corporate social re- sponsibility (CSR) can be measured with a quantifiable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) score, which was developed in part from investor demand. ESG scores are popular among investors to make sound, responsible investment decisions and corporations to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable business practices. In a comparison of environmental and social fac- tors of US and UK firms among three industries, the British outperform their American counter- parts. The degree of disclosure regulation by their respective financial authoritative bodies ac- counts for this discrepancy

Two Concepts of Liberalism in Establishment Clause Jurisprudence

The political theorist William Galston argues that the liberal political tradition contains two distinct strands of philosophical thought. One emphasizes the principle of autonomy, while the other stresses the principle of diversity. These principles, according to Galston, are in tension with each other and as guiding criterions lead to quite different public policies. Autonomy-centered liberalism seeks to promote autonomy or “individual self-direction”; it reflects a “commitment to sustained rational examination of self, others, and social practices.” As such, autonomy-centered liberals are generally suspicious of religious belief and seek to confine it to the private sphere. Diversity-centered liberalism, on the other hand, seeks to maximize the public space (legally, institutionally, and culturally) in which different individuals and groups can live out their differences, limited only by the demands of liberal social unity. Although Galston does not focus on constitutional law, his explanation of the different conceptions of the liberal political tradition and the place of religion in it raises the question of the extent to which the U.S. Supreme Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence can be explained by the autonomy-diversity dichotomy he has drawn. That is, just as autonomy-centered liberalism seeks to confine religion to the private sphere, so too has much of the Supreme Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence. The question arises then as to whether the Supreme Court’s effort to limit the public role of religion has been driven by an understanding of the liberal political tradition that emphasizes the principle of autonomy, or by something else? Similarly, one wonders if the Supreme Court’s movement over the last two decades toward greater tolerance of religion in public life is rooted in an understanding of the liberal political tradition that stresses the protection of diversity over the promotion of autonomy. The aim of this study is to examine the Supreme Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence against the backdrop of Galston’s writings to see if we can discern in the Court’s treatment of religion any affinities with the two concepts of liberalism Galston describes. To this end, I explore the cases in which the Court has wrestled with the degree to which public funds can be used to support the education of children enrolled in religious schools and the cases in which it has used the establishment clause to remove all official religious practices and symbols from public schooling. I focus on the issue of religion and schooling because this is where the Court’s modern establishment clause jurisprudence began and, because it is the context in which a sizeable majority of establishment clause cases have been decided, it is the milieu in which the Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence has largely been fashioned. As Galston points out, moreover, the issue of education is one in which the conflict between autonomy and diversity is especially pronounced. To anticipate my conclusions, I suggest that there are affinities between autonomy-centered liberalism and the jurisprudence that seeks to secularize the public sphere, on the one hand, and between diversity-centered liberalism and the jurisprudence that seeks not to privatize religion but to ensure only that government does not directly support religion, on the other hand. The similarities in both cases are not so strong or robust, however, as to indicate a straightforward connection between liberal political philosophy and the Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence

Citizenship Education and Liberalism: A State of the Debate Analysis 1990–2010

What kind of citizenship education, if any, should schools in liberal societies promote? And what ends is such education supposed to serve? Over the last decades a respectable body of literature has emerged to address these and related issues. In this state of the debate analysis we examine a sample of journal articles dealing with these very issues spanning a twenty-year period with the aim to analyse debate patterns and developments in the research field. We first carry out a qualitative analysis where we design a two-dimensional theoretical framework in order to systematise the various liberal debate positions, and make us able to study their justifications, internal tensions and engagements with other positions. In the ensuing quantitative leg of the study we carry out a quantitative bibliometric analysis where we weigh the importance of specific scholars. We finally discuss possible merits and flaws in the research field, as evidenced in and by the analysis