free exercise clause

(noun)

the accompanying clause with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits Congress from interfering with the practices of any religion

Related Terms

Examples of free exercise clause in the following topics:

  • The Free Exercise Clause: Freedom of Religion

    • The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment establishes the right of all Americans to freely practice their religions.
    • The Free Exercise Clause is the accompanying clause with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
    • The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
    • This interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause continued into the 1960s.
    • Describe how the interpretation of the Free Exercise clause has changed over time.

  • The Establishment Clause: Separation of Church and State

    • The Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. " Together with the Free Exercise Clause ("... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"), these two clauses make up what are called the "religion clauses" of the First Amendment.
    • The accommodation interpretation prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, but does not prohibit the government's entry into religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.
    • Incorporation of the Establishment Clause in 1947 has been tricky and subject to much more critique than incorporation of the Free Exercise Clause.
    • Critics have also argued that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is understood to incorporate only individual rights found in the Bill of Rights; the Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause (which critics readily concede protects individual rights), does not purport to protect individual rights.
    • Distinguish the Establishment Clause from other clauses of the First Amendment

  • Freedom of Religion

    • The following religious civil liberties are guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. " Thus, freedom of religion in the U.S. has two parts: the prohibition on the establishment of a state religion, and the right of all citizens to practice their religion.
    • In what is called the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"), Congress is forbidden from setting up, or in any way providing for, an established church.
    • In addition to the rights afforded under the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to practice their religions.
    • This clause states that Congress cannot "prohibit the free exercise" of religious practices.
    • The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the creation of a state religion in the U.S.

  • Separating Church and State

    • Echoing the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams—who had written in 1644 of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world"—Jefferson wrote, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
    • The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
    • Together with the Free Exercise Clause ("... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"), these two clauses comprise the "religion clauses" of the First Amendment, which is part of a group of the 10 initial constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights.
    • The establishment clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit: 1) Congress' establishment of a national religion, and 2) US governmental preference of one religion over another.
    • The establishment clause arose as an important issue to address during Madison's efforts to ratify the Constitution.

  • The GPL and License Compatibility

    • (The exact language is: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.")
    • However, these same clauses also make the GPL incompatible with certain other free licenses.
    • The usual way this happens is that the other license imposes a requirement—for example, a credit clause requiring the original authors to be mentioned in some way—that is incompatible with the GPL's "You may not impose any further restrictions..." language.
    • From the point of view of the Free Software Foundation, these second-order consequences are desirable, or at least not regrettable.
    • The GPL not only keeps your software free, but effectively makes your software an agent in pushing other software to enforce freedom as well.

  • What About The BSD License?

    • The presence of that clause not only made the original BSD license GPL-incompatible, it also set a dangerous precedent: as other organizations put similar advertising clauses into their free software—substituting their own organization's name in place of "the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory"—software redistributors faced an ever-increasing burden in what they were required to display.
    • Fortunately, many of the projects that used this license became aware of the problem, and simply dropped the advertising clause.
    • The result is the revised BSD license, which is simply the original BSD license with the advertising clause removed.
    • It's not clear that without such a clause, a recipient of the software would have had the right to use the licensor's name anyway, but the clause removes any possible doubt.
    • If you wish to use the most recent revised BSD license, a template is available at opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause.

  • Gibbons v. Ogden

    • He held that it was a legitimate exercise of congressional power regulating interstate commerce, and therefore superseded the state law allowing the monopoly.
    • That, in turn, lowered prices and promoted free enterprise.
    • This marked the beginning of a 40-year period during which the Supreme Court limited the federal government's ability to regulate under the Interstate Commerce Clause.
    • During the 1930's, the Supreme Court changed course again and began to grant greater federal authority under the Commerce Clause, surpassing even the level of recognized authority outlined in Gibbons v.
    • However, Strict Constructionists (those who believe that the Constitution must be given the narrowest possible construction) held a different view of the meaning of the Commerce Clause as interpreted in Gibbons, arguing that it was limited in scope because the decision could be interpreted to suggest that navigation only pertained to the Commerce Clause insofar as it allowed for the interstate transportation of goods.

  • Laissez-Faire and the Supreme Court

    • Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals.
    • Although this interpretation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial one, it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the 19th century.
    • The Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the due process clause protected the right to contract seven years earlier, in Allgeyer v.
    • Laissez-faire refers to an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies.
    • By extension, free markets become a reflection of the natural system of liberty.

  • Congress

    • Two constitutional clauses, the Constitution and Foreign Commerce Clause and the War Power Clause, give Congress foreign policy powers.
    • Perhaps the most important powers are in the War Power Clause which was given to Congress in the Constitution and Foreign Commerce Clause.
    • This clause provides Congress with the power to regulate commerce overseas.
    • The Commerce Clause in the Constitution also give Congress the power to regulate trade between nations.
    • The Commerce Clause is an enumerated list in the United States Constitution.

  • The First Amendment

    • The amendment prohibits the making of any law pertaining to an establishment of a federal or state religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press , interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances .
    • The text of the First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
    • Before the twentieth century, most free speech issues involved prior restraint.
    • This was done through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment .
    • The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to a free press.