Edwards v. Aguillard
Encyclopedia
Edwards v. Aguillard, was a legal case about the teaching of creationism
that was heard by the Supreme Court of the United States
in 1987. The Court ruled that a Louisiana
law requiring that creation science
be taught in public schools, along with evolution
, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. It also held that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction."
In support of Aguillard, 72 Nobel prize
-winning scientists, 17 state academies of science, and 7 other scientific organizations filed amicus briefs which described creation science
as being composed of religious tenets.
arose out of the theological
split over modernist
higher criticism and its rejection by the Fundamentalist Christian movement
which promoted Biblical literalism
and, post 1920, took up the anti-evolution cause led by William Jennings Bryan
. Teaching of evolution
had become a common part of the public school curriculum, but his campaign was based on the idea that “Darwinism
” had caused German militarism and was a threat to traditional religion and morality. Several states passed legislation
to ban or restrict the teaching of evolution. The Tennessee
Butler Act
was tested in the Scopes Trial
of 1925, and continued in effect with the result that evolution was not taught in many schools.
When the United States sought to catch up in science during the 1960s with new teaching standards which reintroduced evolution, the creation science
movement arose, presenting what was claimed to be scientific evidence supporting young earth creationism
. Attempts were made to reintroduce legal bans, but the Supreme Court ruled that bans on teaching evolutionary biology are unconstitutional as they violate the establishment clause of the US constitution, which forbids the government from advancing a particular religion.
In the early 1980s several states attempted to introduce creationism along with teaching of evolution, and the Louisiana legislature passed a law, authored by State Senator
Bill P. Keith
of Caddo Parish
, entitled the "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act". The Act did not require teaching either creationism or evolution, but did require that when evolutionary science was taught, "creation science" had to be taught as well. Creationists had lobbied aggressively for the law, and the State argued that the Act was about academic freedom for teachers. The measure was signed into law by Governor David C. Treen
.
Lower courts had ruled that the State's actual purpose was to promote the religious doctrine of "creation science", but the State appealed to the Supreme Court. A similar case, McLean v. Arkansas
, had also decided against creationism but was not appealed to the national level, creationists instead thinking that they had better chances with Edwards v. Aguillard.
, which is:
However it did note that alternative scientific theories could be taught:
The Court found that, although the Louisiana legislature had stated that its purpose was to "protect academic freedom," that purpose was dubious because the Act gave Louisiana teachers no freedom they did not already possess and instead limited their ability to determine what scientific principles should be taught. Because it was unconvinced by the state's proffered secular purpose, the Court went on to find that the legislature had a "preeminent religious purpose in enacting this statute."
, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist
, dissented, accepting the Act's stated purpose of "protecting academic freedom" as a sincere and legitimate secular purpose. They construed the term "academic freedom" to refer to "students' freedom from indoctrination", in this case their freedom "to decide for themselves how life began, based upon a fair and balanced presentation of the scientific evidence". However, they also criticized the first prong of the Lemon test, noting that "to look for the sole purpose of even a single legislator is probably to look for something that does not exist".
. The scope of the ruling affected state schools and did not include independent schools, home schools
, Sunday school
s and Christian school
s, all of whom remained free to teach creationism.
Within two years of the ruling a creationist textbook was produced: Of Pandas and People
which attacked evolutionary biology without mentioning the identity of the supposed "intelligent designer
". Drafts of the text used "creation" or "creator" before being changed to "intelligent design" or "designer" after the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling. This form of creationism, known as intelligent design creationism was developed in the early 1990s. This would eventually lead to another court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
, which went to trial on September 26, 2005 and was decided in U.S. District Court on December 20, 2005 in favor of the plaintiffs, who charged that a mandate that intelligent design be taught was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The 139 page opinion of Kitzmiller v. Dover was hailed as a landmark decision, firmly establishing that creationism and intelligent design were religious teachings and not areas of legitimate scientific research. Because the Dover school board chose not to appeal, the case never reached a circuit court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wendell Bird
served as a special assistant attorney general for Louisiana
in the case and later became a staff attorney for the Institute for Creation Research
and Association of Christian Schools International
. Bird later authored books promoting creationism and teaching it in public schools.
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
that was heard by the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
in 1987. The Court ruled that a Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
law requiring that creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
be taught in public schools, along with evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. It also held that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction."
In support of Aguillard, 72 Nobel prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning scientists, 17 state academies of science, and 7 other scientific organizations filed amicus briefs which described creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
as being composed of religious tenets.
Background
Modern American creationismCreationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
arose out of the theological
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
split over modernist
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
higher criticism and its rejection by the Fundamentalist Christian movement
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...
which promoted Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used almost exclusively by conservative Christians...
and, post 1920, took up the anti-evolution cause led by William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
. Teaching of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
had become a common part of the public school curriculum, but his campaign was based on the idea that “Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
” had caused German militarism and was a threat to traditional religion and morality. Several states passed legislation
Legislation
Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...
to ban or restrict the teaching of evolution. The Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
Butler Act
Butler Act
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man’s origin. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 Section 1922...
was tested in the Scopes Trial
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
of 1925, and continued in effect with the result that evolution was not taught in many schools.
When the United States sought to catch up in science during the 1960s with new teaching standards which reintroduced evolution, the creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
movement arose, presenting what was claimed to be scientific evidence supporting young earth creationism
Young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago...
. Attempts were made to reintroduce legal bans, but the Supreme Court ruled that bans on teaching evolutionary biology are unconstitutional as they violate the establishment clause of the US constitution, which forbids the government from advancing a particular religion.
In the early 1980s several states attempted to introduce creationism along with teaching of evolution, and the Louisiana legislature passed a law, authored by State Senator
Louisiana State Legislature
The Louisiana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 representatives, and the upper house, the Louisiana Senate with 39 senators...
Bill P. Keith
Bill Keith (Louisiana politician)
Billy P. Keith, known as Bill Keith , is an author of fiction and nonfiction in Longview, Texas, who served from 1980 to 1984 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate...
of Caddo Parish
Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Caddo Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish seat is Shreveport; as of 2000, the population was 252,161...
, entitled the "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act". The Act did not require teaching either creationism or evolution, but did require that when evolutionary science was taught, "creation science" had to be taught as well. Creationists had lobbied aggressively for the law, and the State argued that the Act was about academic freedom for teachers. The measure was signed into law by Governor David C. Treen
David C. Treen
David Conner "Dave" Treen, Sr. , was an American attorney and politician from Mandeville, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana – the first Republican Governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana since Reconstruction. He was the first Republican in modern times to have served in the U.S...
.
Lower courts had ruled that the State's actual purpose was to promote the religious doctrine of "creation science", but the State appealed to the Supreme Court. A similar case, McLean v. Arkansas
McLean v. Arkansas
McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 , was a 1981 legal case in Arkansas.A lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the...
, had also decided against creationism but was not appealed to the national level, creationists instead thinking that they had better chances with Edwards v. Aguillard.
Opinion
On June 19, 1987 the Supreme Court, in a seven to two majority opinion written by Justice William J. Brennan, ruled that the Act constituted an unconstitutional infringement on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, based on the three-pronged Lemon testLemon v. Kurtzman
Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Pennsylvania's 1968 Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allowed the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to reimburse nonpublic schools for the salaries of teachers who...
, which is:
- The government's action must have a legitimate secular purpose;
- The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and
- The government's action must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of the government and religion.
However it did note that alternative scientific theories could be taught:
- We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. . . . Teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.
The Court found that, although the Louisiana legislature had stated that its purpose was to "protect academic freedom," that purpose was dubious because the Act gave Louisiana teachers no freedom they did not already possess and instead limited their ability to determine what scientific principles should be taught. Because it was unconvinced by the state's proffered secular purpose, the Court went on to find that the legislature had a "preeminent religious purpose in enacting this statute."
Dissent
Justice Antonin ScaliaAntonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
, dissented, accepting the Act's stated purpose of "protecting academic freedom" as a sincere and legitimate secular purpose. They construed the term "academic freedom" to refer to "students' freedom from indoctrination", in this case their freedom "to decide for themselves how life began, based upon a fair and balanced presentation of the scientific evidence". However, they also criticized the first prong of the Lemon test, noting that "to look for the sole purpose of even a single legislator is probably to look for something that does not exist".
Consequences and aftermath
The ruling was one in a series of developments addressing issues related to the American creationist movement and the separation of church and stateSeparation of church and state in the United States
The phrase "separation of church and state" , attributed to Thomas Jefferson and others, and since quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States, expresses an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States...
. The scope of the ruling affected state schools and did not include independent schools, home schools
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
, Sunday school
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
s and Christian school
Christian school
A Christian school is a school run on Christian principles or by a Christian organization.The nature of Christian schools varies enormously from country to country, according to the religious, educational, and political cultures...
s, all of whom remained free to teach creationism.
Within two years of the ruling a creationist textbook was produced: Of Pandas and People
Of Pandas and People
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics...
which attacked evolutionary biology without mentioning the identity of the supposed "intelligent designer
Intelligent designer
An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life...
". Drafts of the text used "creation" or "creator" before being changed to "intelligent design" or "designer" after the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling. This form of creationism, known as intelligent design creationism was developed in the early 1990s. This would eventually lead to another court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design...
, which went to trial on September 26, 2005 and was decided in U.S. District Court on December 20, 2005 in favor of the plaintiffs, who charged that a mandate that intelligent design be taught was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The 139 page opinion of Kitzmiller v. Dover was hailed as a landmark decision, firmly establishing that creationism and intelligent design were religious teachings and not areas of legitimate scientific research. Because the Dover school board chose not to appeal, the case never reached a circuit court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wendell Bird
Wendell Bird
Wendell Bird is an attorney practicing in Atlanta, Georgia who concentrates primarily in litigation and in tax laws affecting exempt organizations. He is a senior partner at an Atlanta law firm....
served as a special assistant attorney general for Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
in the case and later became a staff attorney for the Institute for Creation Research
Institute for Creation Research
The Institute for Creation Research is a Christian institution in Dallas, Texas that specializes in education, research, and media promotion of Creation Science and Biblical creationism. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as...
and Association of Christian Schools International
Association of Christian Schools International
The Association of Christian Schools International is an association of evangelical Protestant Christian schools.-Purposes:ACSI, a protestant association for Christian schools, impacts nearly 23,000 schools and transforms the lives of more than 3.9 million students worldwide...
. Bird later authored books promoting creationism and teaching it in public schools.
Related cases
- Scopes TrialScopes TrialThe Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
(1925) - McLean v. ArkansasMcLean v. ArkansasMcLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 , was a 1981 legal case in Arkansas.A lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the...
(1981) - Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School DistrictKitzmiller v. Dover Area School DistrictTammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design...
(2005)
External links
- Affidavit of Dean H. KenyonDean H. KenyonDean H. Kenyon is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University and an intelligent design proponent. He is also the author of Of Pandas and People, a controversial book on intelligent design.- Career :...
- Amicus brief of science organizations and Nobel-Prize winners