Mark Souder: “many of the Constitutional issues relevant to the Charitable Choice debate were discussed in an excellent article by…”

“many of the Constitutional issues relevant to the Charitable Choice debate were discussed in an excellent article by Carl Esbeck in the Emory Law Review, which follows: A Constitutional Case for Governmental Cooperation With Faith-Based Social Service Providers. It is often said that America's founding was an experiment in government. Certainly few features of the American constitutional settlement left more to future change--and were more of a break with existing European patterns--than the Establishment Clause set out in the First Amendment. The new Republic sought to rely on transcendent principles to justify its unprecedented advancements in human liberty. Concurrently, the Founders rejected any official or fixed formulation of these principles, for no public credo was to be established by law. So it is more than just a little ironic that the nation's most cherished human rights depend upon the continued private faith of innumerable Americans in creeds and confessions that themselves cannot be officially adopted by the Republic, lest the adoption run afoul of the prohibition on laws respecting an establishment of religion.”