Burton Family Chair of Religion, Politics, and Culture

Across the United States a growing number of state legislatures and local school boards have adopted measures either permitting or requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools. In this paper, I first describe the constitutional questions surrounding these displays and then highlight the likelihood of the Supreme Court’s overturning its 1980 precedent, Stone v. Graham, which barred such displays. I conclude with reflections on the need for educational theorists to focus on the propriety as public policy of displaying the Ten Commandments given that the constitutional issues are quite likely to be settled in the near future–a task itself which can helpfully be illuminated by a close reading of the constitutional debates in this area. No matter what the future holds, this paper provides insights on the constitutional context surrounding a growing movement to enhance the place of religion in American public education and highlights increasingly important questions of public policy relating to the place of religious symbols in the public school classroom.