n Monday mornings are tough. Tough to get out of bed, tough to make it to class, tough to get through the long afternoon; however, with no classes on Mondays, the toughest part of my day is wading through the muck that is Tara Stroll’s weekly column. Stroll’s column yesterday (“Liberals, here’s your chance to support choice,” page 4) prompted me to do some research, research that went beyond typing “separation of church and state” into the Google search bar. The basis for this right of separation has its roots implicitly in the Constitution. Not even the strictest of constitutional interpreters could argue against this fact.
The First Amendment says in its entire first independent clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This would imply government neutrality that it can neither support religion, by providing school vouchers to largely parochial schools, nor restrict religion, by enacting laws suppressing the free practice of one’s faith. The real substance of the argument for separation comes in a legal case from 1962, Engel v. Vitale, decided by the United States Supreme Court. This ruling said that prayer in public schools is illegal even when it is voluntary.
When one applies the now infamous legal term “stare decisis,” which was Chief Justice John Roberts’ favorite substitute for an actual answer at last month’s confirmation hearing, it is clear that separation is a guaranteed right. The concept of stare decisis is that one literally stands by what has been decided. In simple terms, separation of church and state is a legal precedent. Stroll gets one thing right that separation is not “in the Constitution,” but still it is as good as law. Stroll could have read the entire Constitution in preparation for writing her column, but it wouldn’t have helped; laws in the U.S. don’t emanate from only one document. Engel v. Vitale and numerous other cases have upheld that prayer should not play any role in public school. So, a voucher to a private parochial school is in a way the government supporting religion, when it should focus on actually fixing the problem of its troubled public school systems. Perhaps the teachers and educators are right when they say a voucher program would be a bad idea; maybe that is why they are our nation’s teachers and educators.
Matt O’Connor CAS ’08
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