Legal Geographies—Legal Sense and Geographical Context: Court Rulings on Religious Activities in Public Schools

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of geographical context in five leading U.S. Supreme Court cases on religious activities in public schools. These cases are part of a broader, highly controversial jurisprudence that has had the effect of secularizing public education, in large part through the creation of boundaries intended to protect the individual conscience from collective and governmental action. Three types of spatial context are found to be central to judicial reasoning in this area: the school, the community, and the nation. The Court has debated the contemporary and historical characteristics of each of these environments at length, although for an outspoken minority, the only context relevant to constitutional interpretation concerns the words and actions of the Founders in the late 18th century. Even this division, however, lends support to the notion that judicial reasoning may turn more on issues of sociospatial context, than on strictly legalistic questions.