CADRE Comments

I am presently reading a book by Professor Alan Dershowitz entitled Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, Remarkable Discovery, And The First Amendment In An Age Of Terrorism . In the book, Prof. Dershowitz details how he located a previously unknown letter written by the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, in a specialty bookstore in New York, and how that letter gives insight about Pres. Jefferson's view on the reach of the First Amendment. Personally, I don’t recommend reading the book because too much of the book is either fluff (Chapter one is all about Prof. Dershowitz’s hobby as a collector) or Prof. Dershowitz’s effort to have a one-sided argument with a man who can’t respond (the final chapters are his “letter” back to Pres. Jefferson giving reasons for disagreeing with his views). Also, Prof. Dershowitz is, of course, somewhat of a typical New York liberal in his views, and consequently he takes a fairly heavy-handed, dismissive view of thinkers who believe that Am...

With the possible exception of some poor soul who has been living in a cave for the past eighty years, virtually every American is aware of the "Wall of Separation between Church and State" (the "Wall Metaphor"). It has been used to try to summarize the relationship between the government and religion under the United States Constitution. Yet, as most everyone also knows (except for the aforementioned cave-dweller), the Constitution does not use the words "wall" or "separation" of church and state. This post will give a brief examination of the source of the Wall Metaphor and why it has been misused since 1947. Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association The Wall Metaphor entered into the Constitutional lexicon as a result of two court decisions regarding the First Amendment and religion: First, in Reynolds v. United States , 98 U.S. 145 (1878), and later in Everson v. Board of Education , 330 U.S. 1 (1947).  Both of these d...