U.S. Supreme Court,
Constitutional Law
Jun. 5, 2013
Why pray before a town hall meeting?
The Supreme Court would in all likelihood not grant review unless it intended to reconsider the entire question of religious invocations.
Charles S. Doskow
Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law, University of La Verne College of Law
Email: dosklaw@aol.com
Harvard Law School
Charles is a past president of the Inland Empire Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, and in 2012 was awarded the chapter's Erwin Chemerinsky Defender of the Constitution award.
It is certainly far from uncommon for public bodies to open their deliberations with a religious statement of some kind. Clergy are commonly invited to present an invocation.
Such was the practice of the New York state town of Greece, until it was successfully challenged in federal court by a lawsuit brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The result of that challenge may be a fundamental reconsideration of the Establishment Clause jurisprudence in the are...For only $95 a month (the price of 2 article purchases)
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