ABSTRACT
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and the founder of the Democratic-Republican Party, was a staunch defender of civil liberties. Freedom of religion, in Jefferson's view, was the foundation on which all expressive liberty stood. In theory, Jefferson's wall of separation, articulated through the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, has meant that no one religion has been given preference over another and that the US government was prohibited from establishing a state religion as England had done. In historical practice, the wall of separation has been interpreted by the US Supreme Court as banning everything from the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools and government buildings to government support of parochial schools to permission for Jewish soldiers to wear yarmulkes while in dress uniform.
