In the recent Pledge of Allegiance case, Justice Thomas tried to guide the Supreme Court's church-state jurisprudence back toward the Constitution.(Clarence Thomas)(Brief Article)

* In the recent Pledge of Allegiance case, Justice Thomas tried to guide the Supreme Court's church-state jurisprudence back toward the Constitution. The First Amendment was originally understood as a federalist measure, one that protected the authority of state governments to manage church-state relations as they saw fit. Justice Thomas is not willing to go quite that far. But he sees, more clearly than any other justice, that the Court, in six decades of trying to manage church-state relations nationwide, has not so much interpreted the religion clause as repealed it. That attempt has now put the Court in an embarrassing position. Existing doctrine holds that governments cannot expose students to social pressure to acknowledge the Creator: That would be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. If so, it is hard to see how ...