What is the Court Trying to Establish: An Analysis of Lee v. Weisman

Authors

Dina F. El-Sayed

Abstract

Lee v. Weisman marked a new turn in Establishment Clause jurisprudence. In Lee, the United States Supreme Court declared that prayers delivered as part of a public school graduation ceremony violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In holding the prayers unconstitutional, the Court invented a new framework for analyzing Establishment Clause cases-the coercion test. By invoking the coercion test without clarifying the status of the test previously developed in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court has left the law in a state of confusion. This Comment does not discuss whether graduation prayers should be constitutional. Rather, it criticizes the Court's analysis as unsupported by precedent and unpersuasive in reason.

Recommended Citation

Dina F. El-Sayed, What is the Court Trying to Establish: An Analysis of Lee v. Weisman, 21 Hastings Const. L.Q. 441 (1994).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly/vol21/iss2/6