Word: religion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Conservative and liberal observers were agreed. Like it or not, the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years had seemed to favor some erosion of Thomas Jefferson's sturdy "wall of separation between church and state." Both sides expected the trend to continue after the court scheduled new religion cases this term. But last week, as it recessed for the summer, the court confounded the prognosticators. For the third time in a month, the Justices took a tough stand against allowing government and religion...
...provide remedial or accelerated classes for disadvantaged or bright children. Justice William Brennan, who wrote both majority opinions, concluded in the Grand Rapids case that by physically entering parochial schools, public school teachers are supplying not only a direct subsidy but also that "crucial symbolic link between government and religion" that the Constitution does not allow. The New York ruling will affect parochial school participation in a 20-year-old federal education program that aids remedial classes. Some 183,000 of the 4.7 million federally assisted children attend private schools, most of them religious. Special classes taught by public school...
...Sabbath day off, and four weeks after the court voted 6 to 3 to invalidate an Alabama law that allowed a moment of silence for prayer in the public schools. The Reagan Administration was on the losing side of all three disputes. Denouncing the court's "fastidious disdain for religion," Secretary of Education William Bennett complained that the latest rulings will make it "vastly more difficult to provide education service to some of America's neediest schoolchildren." Bennett's view echoed the lament of dissenting Chief Justice Warren Burger, who wrote in the New York case that "it borders...
...though, to think of immigrants as an undifferentiated clump, politically or otherwise. Not only do they differ by national origin and social class and ideology but also according to whether they plan to stay permanently or eventually return home. "What binds Americans to one another, regardless of ethnicity or religion, is an American civic culture," says Brandeis Professor Fuchs. "It is the basis for the unum in E pluribus unum. It is a complex of ideals, behaviors, institutions, symbols and heroes connected by American history and its great documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address...
...preferences" gives priority to other relatives of U.S. citizens and people with "urgently" required skills. In 1980 Congress also passed a Refugee Act that allowed the admission of as many as 70,000 additional people annually who have a "well- founded fear of persecution" on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. The definition of exactly who qualifies as a refugee under those rules remains highly controversial. Last year 61,750 official refugees were admitted...