The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court

by Frederick S. Lane

Book Overview

An investigation into the Religious Right, judicial nominees, and future decisions on evolution, prayer in schools, abortion, and more Blending the effective use of grassroots campaigns, aggressive... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807044245
• ISBN13: 9780807044247
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Solid

Fredrick Lane's "The Court and the Cross" is part legal history, part current affairs tract that follows the creation, past judicial treatment, and future outlook for both the Free Exercise Clause (which assures religious liberty to all Americans) and Establishment Clause (which theoretically assures the secular administration of American government). It opens with a recounting of the acts and debates between prominent politicians of the early U.S. republic that led to both clauses, as well as the its extension to state governments by the 14th Amendment, then finally into the U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of modern church-state issues. Lane generally devotes about a chapter each to key topics like public funding of religious institutions, prayer or other religious activity on public land or in public institutions, efforts by religious organizations to interfere with the teaching of evolutionary science in public schools, the ceaseless debate over the right to abortion and other aspects of the right of privacy, and so on. In the process, Lane discusses many of the people and organizations on the respective sides of these debates, and the effects of major historic events and social trends that have shifted the context in which the most important cases have come to the Supreme Court. Lane delivers his facts in a largely objective, journalistic style, as is his analysis of the court opinions and legal development. However, Lane does express a distinctly pro-secularist opinion of his subject matter; he openly laments the many Supreme Court decisions that have eroded the wall of separation between church and state, and cautiously fears the Roberts-led conservative majority on the present court. I suspect that these opinions (although quite moderate and mainstream) are probably more responsible for the multiple 1-star reviews he has already accumulated than any other flaws in the material. It is true that The Court and The Cross suffers from a mild lack of originality. Supreme Court and Constitutional scholars like Peter Irons and Cass Sunstein have recounted the historical development and interpretation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses much more fully and authoritatively than Lane attempts here. Recent investigative works like Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming" have exposed the puritanical agendas of organizations like Focus on the Family and the Thomas More Law Center. And numerous recent books by authors like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have given the political arguments in favor of a secular state in much more forceful tones than anything Lane has to say. But as a brief, readable, pithy text that combines all three strains of research and exposition, The Court and The Cross is easily a worthwhile read.