ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the constitutionality of the common ground. This common ground is merely that portion of true tolerance about which adherents to a certain group of ultimate concerns can agree. The claim that God-talk is protected from establishment clause scrutiny because it is no longer taken seriously as referring to God is arrogant nonsense. The other claims and counterclaims in Aguilar echoed contentions which the badly divided Court had already rehearsed in the much more explosive Wallace, Wallace was the fruit of an attempt by Alabama legislators to provoke a Constitutional test—an aim about which they had been most clear. A law that is otherwise constitutional, and that does not expressly single out a particular sect, will now be permitted to burden any religious practice whatsoever, and to any degree, so long as the burden is "merely the incidental effect" of the law.
