Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents

Product Description Throughout American history, legal battles concerning the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty have been among the most contentious issue of the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents represents the most authoritative and up-to-date overview of the landmark cases that have defined religious freedom in America. Noted religious liberty expert Vincent Philip Munoz (Notre Dame) provides carefully edited excerpts from over fifty of the most important Supreme Court religious liberty cases. In addition, Munoz's substantive introduction offers an overview on the constitutional history of religious liberty in America. Introductory headnotes to each case provides the constitutional and historical context. Religious Liberty and the American Constitution will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested matters of religious freedom from the Republics earliest days to current debates. Review Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court is an important addition to the literature on American church and state by a leading scholar. It is an excellent text for undergraduate and law school courses on church and state and a handy resource for anyone interested in how the Supreme Court has struggled to address this controversial issue.--Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law, Willamette University and former Legal Director and Special Counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State A superb collection. Vincent Philip Muñoz has collected and deftly edited all the important Supreme Court religious liberty cases. If you are teaching a class on religious liberty in the United States, here is your text.--Bryan McGraw, Wheaton College I have known Professor Muñoz for nearly a decade. Although, at times, he and I come out on different sides of the debate regarding religious freedom, I have always greatly admired both his superlative scholarship and his clear and concise writings. Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court is an invaluable reference work that will aid students, professors, and practitioners in making sense of the often confusing jurisprudence that exists in regard to America's 'First Freedom.'--Michael Newdow, Appellee in the Pledge of Allegiance case Elk Grove School District v. Newdow Professor Muñoz, one of our most perceptive scholars of religion and government, has assembled an outstanding compendium of the cases and controversies that have created the distinctly American approach to church-state constitutional issues. This volume is an ideal resource for both classroom and reference use.--Donald L. Drakeman, Chairman of the James Madison Program, Princeton University, and author of Church, State, and Original Intent Religious liberty has become an increasingly contentious issue in the US in recent years. Most works that address the issue though, take the form of polemic from one perspective or another. In this volume, however, editor Muñoz, a professor of political science and law at the University of Notre Dame, presents a very exhaustive compendium of large excerpts from the actual landmark Supreme Court cases on religious liberty. The introduction largely concerns the two parts of the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. It discusses important cases bearing on both aspects of the Amendment such as Everson v. Board of Education (1947) where the concept of the 'wall of separation' between church and state originated and Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which tested the limits of the Free Exercise Clause. After this, the book is divided into two sections. In the first there are 64 cases, arranged in chronological order from Reynolds v. United States in 1879 to Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2012. For each case there is a brief introduction which be