A Limited Public Forum?
Barry Hankins September/October 2001 In church-state activism today the battle lines usually form between separationists and accommodationists. While there are other positions, these two have emerged dominant. While by the reckoning of most observers the accommodationists have been winning more often than not in Supreme Court decisions, no one wins all the time. In fact, one of the great ironies of Supreme Court jurisprudence, especially in church-state cases, is that the principles which favor a particular group of activists in one case can be used in ways that frustrate that group later. This is exactly what has happened with the religious liberty principles that were used in the Rosenberger case of 1995, the Southworth case of 2000, and an Alabama appeals court case also in 2000.Rosenberger v. University of Virginia was heralded by many evangelical accommodationists as a sign that religion might get a fair shake in the public square after all. Accommodationists generally believe that from the Everson bus case of 1947 until at least the 1980s the Supreme Court put too much emphasis on the separation of church and state and the