3 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2021
    1. Elena Kagan

      I believe Justice Kagan is the second dissenter. She seems to side against Cortman as she argues that the States should have some flexibility in their choices. She questions what would happen if one church received benefits while a different church didn't. Cortman goes on to say that the program is religion blind, but its seemed to me that she was not agreeing with anything he said.

    2. we don't want to, as a country -- well, the vast majority of States, to fund houses of worship.

      I also read this as a sign of a dissenting justice. I believe Sotomayor is a dissenting justice because she strictly says the state does not fund places of worship. She goes on to say that if the state is free from places of worship, then funding it would affect free exercise.

    3. That's a history that's even longer than the Locke history.

      Although I wasn't feeling sure beforehand, this moment from Justice Sotomayor fortified my notion that she was the second dissenting Justice in this case. Just as Ginsberg did, she chose to utilize the Stare Decisis method of decision making, and asserts here that the older a legal precedent that has been set is, the more firmly it holds as an establishment of proper interpretation of law. This solififies her argument that follows, that as a country we should not fund religious places of worship.