Essay

Religion, Schools, and Judicial Decision Making: An Empirical Perspective

Michael Heise

Professor, Cornell Law School

Gregory C. Sisk

Laghi Distinguished Chair in Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law

We thank Dawn M. Chutkow as well as participants in the Understanding Education in the United States Symposium at the University of Chicago Law School for comments on an earlier draft. Professor Sisk offers thanks to his assistant, Bethany Fletcher, for recording data coding and to law students Eric Beecher and Alicia Long for assistance with opinion coding. A spreadsheet containing our data set, regression run results, coding of each decision, coding of each judge, and code books may be found at http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/gcsisk /religion.study.data/cover.html.

From the beginning of modern religious-liberty jurisprudence, the most difficult and penetrating questions about the proper relationship between church and state have arisen with special frequency, controversy, and fervor in the often-charged atmosphere of education. As Professor Joseph Viteritti notes, “As far back as can be remembered, religion has been at the center of American education, as a source of both inspiration and agitation.” Likewise, Professor Thomas Berg observes that “religion and education are perennially mixing.” When reviewing the battles about when the state must accommodate the religious demands of individual citizens and how the government should balance recognition of religious traditions in American history against the prohibition on government endorsement of religion, we find that school boards, school administrators, teachers, students, and their parents have often occupied the front lines.

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