Justice Rutledge's Appendix

Abstract

Much disagreement and dispute have occurred since the Supreme Court inaugurated the modern era of Establishment Clause doctrine in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education. Yet rather than turn elsewhere, this article argues that the best path to clarification of this doctrine lies in a return to basics, a return to what that case put forward as the basis of the meaning of the Establishment Clause - Madison’s role in the religious liberty struggle in Virginia in the 1780’s and, above all, in his Memorial and Remonstrance. But this examination focuses on what the justices in Everson did not - the principle of equal religious liberty that underpins that document and Madison’s view of church/state relations generally.