ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the cases primarily addressing the first clause of the First Amendment—“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. In the 1960s any lingering sense of Protestant hegemony gave way to a recognition of pluralism as the American cultural reality. This pluralism extended well beyond the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish mainstream, giving considerable support to the claims of both nonbelievers and adherents of new or uncommon faiths. To endure the speech of false ideas or offensive content and then to counter it is part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society, a society which insists upon open discourse towards the end of a tolerant citizenry. Justice Souter’s opinion spoke only for a plurality of the Court; altogether, there were five concurring opinions and one dissenting. The plurality position breaks fundamentally with Establishment Clause principle, and with the methodology painstakingly worked out in support of it.
