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4 Am. Pol. Thought 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/ampolth4 and id is 1 raw text is: 










Church and State


in the Founding-Era


State Constitutions


VINCENT PHILLIP MUNOZ



ABSTRACT
An enormous  effort has been dedicated to uncovering the original meaning of the First
Amendment's  Religion Clauses, but, surprisingly, little research has been directed to
ward the founding era state constitutions on church and state. This article aims to open
a field of inquiry by making the church state provisions of the founding era state con
stitutions more accessible. It begins with a consideration of the distinction between the
state declarations of rights and the state constitutions and the interpretive challenge this
distinction poses. I then identify, categorize, and interpret the relevant church state pro
visions of the founding era state declarations of rights and constitutions. The article
concludes with a discussion of how a deeper knowledge of the founding era state church
state provisions might shed light on the original meaning of the First Amendment's Re
ligion Clauses, and it reveals the probable errors of particular originalist arguments made
by leading scholars and Supreme Court justices.



An  enormous  effort has been dedicated to uncovering  the original meaning  of
the First Amendment's   Religion  Clauses. Scholars have  exhaustively  investi-
gated the  original meaning  of the text (e.g., McConnell  1990b;  Hamburger
1992;  Smith 1995;  Feldman  2005,  19-56;  Drakeman   2010;  Green 2010,  15-
80), its drafting in the First Congress (e.g., Laycock 1986; Levy 1986, 75-89;
Muiioz  2006,  2008;  Greenawalt  2008,  18-39;  West  2011),  and the church-
state political thought of the individuals more or less responsible for it, espe-
cially Madison   and  Jefferson (e.g., Kessler 1983; Dreisbach  2002;  Muiioz


Vincent Phillip Mufioz is Tocqueville associate professor of political science and concurrent associate
professor of law, University of Notre Dame, Department of Political Science, 217 O'Shaughnessy Hall,
Notre Dame, IN 46556 (vmunoz@nd.edu).
   The author would like to thank the following individuals for their helpful criticisms and suggestions to
drafts of this article: Peri Arnold, Don Drakeman, Daniel Dreisbach, John Dinan, Matthew Frank, Rick
Garnett, Mark Hall, Diana Judd, Geoff Laymann, Kathryn Mims, Matthew Shapanka, Jennifer Smith,
and Michael Zuckert.


American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, vol. 4 (Winter 2015).
2161-1580/2015/0401-0001$10.00. © 2015 by The Jack Miller Center. All rights reserved.

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