Alito on Church and State

Don at Article 19 also took a look at Alito's job application (I wrote about it on Tuesday), and he's got some questions of his own. Here's what Alito wrote twenty years ago:

In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment.

And here's Don:

I will leave it to others to wonder about Alito's problem with the one-man, one-vote principle established in the reapportionment decisions. But what were the Warren Court decisions with respect to the Establishment Clause?

In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Court held by a 6-1 vote that school-sponsored prayer in public schools, even if basically voluntary and non-denominational, was unconstitutional.

Abington Township v. Schempp (1963) determined--with an 8-1 vote--that public schools were not the place or time for officially sanctioned and organized Bible reading. Here it was determined that to meet Establishment Clause criteria of neutrality, activities must have "secular purpose" and that its "primary effect" must neither promote nor inhibit a particular religion.

Exactly which of these does Judge Alito have a problem with? Would he like to keep school-sponsored prayer or Bible readings in public schools?

It appears that this document (PDF file) is offering a rich vein of inquiry for anyone willing to pursue it. Let's hope the Democrats, who slowly seem to be waking up after a long, long winter's slumber, have the wherewithal to ask the questions.