Legal and Public Foundation
The United States Constitution addresses the issue of religion in two places: in the First Amendment, and the Article VI prohibition on religious tests as a condition for holding public office. The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" This provision was later expanded to state and local governments, through the Incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Religion In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words legal, public and/or foundation:
“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation’s public school system entitled “Savage Inequalities,” Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)