From Majority Power to Minority Rights: The influence of religious politics on the Supreme Court
By Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell A movement for religious rights is transforming the place of religion in American public life. From the 1960s until very recently, liberals successfully argued at the Supreme Court that the tyranny of the majority cannot define the lives and experiences of secular citizens. For decades, the court regularly ruled that laws imposed by local majorities enforcing school prayer or religious displays on government property violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which has been interpreted to mean the government is prohibited from endorsing religion or favoring...
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