"Have To" History: Stone v. Graham (1980)
The following is a first draft for what I hope will become the follow-up to "Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases. I'm sharing some of the chapters as they're written, partly to share with you, my Eleven Faithful Followers, and partly because nothing brings out the typos, grammar errors, and other shortcomings like publishing something online. Enjoy.
Thou Shalt Post These In Every Classroom
Three Big Things:
1. Kentucky required that the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms without comment, but with a little disclaimer underneath about them being the “fundamental legal code of Western civilization.”
2. The Court applied the “Lemon Test” and determined that the legislation had no clear secular purpose; it was thus a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
3. Whereas recent cases had dealt with efforts to support the secular education of students in religious schools without running afoul of the “wall of separation,” Stone marked a new generation of cases focused on the reverse – seeing just how far religion could be brought back into public schooling.
Background
The Supreme Court’s decision in Stone v. Graham was announced on November 17th, 1980. Less than two weeks earlier, Ronald Reagan had been elected President of the United States, initiating what would later be called the “Reagan Revolution” – a resurgence of conservative values and policies anchored in an idealized past. The events leading to Stone began years earlier, but its outcome sent a message to the faithful in the 1980s similar to that of Engel v. Vitale and Abington v. Schempp two decades before: American’s fundamental values (meaning public promotion of CONTINUE READING: "Have To" History: Stone v. Graham (1980) | Blue Cereal Education
