HKS Students and Research Affiliates

In this article, Ms. Goldenziel explores the administrative and constitutional peculiarities of the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiative. She argues that the Supreme Court's establishment clause jurisprudence offers no clear standards for administrative rule-making. However, the Bush administration has ignored the Supreme Court's guidelines and has crafted a program of dubious constitutionality. The Initiative is nearly impermeable to constitutional challenges or other public checks because of its peculiar place in the administrative structure. Because the Initiative endangers the fundamental constitutional right to freedom from religious establishment, Ms. Goldenziel calls for the Initiative to be publicly accountable, and provides suggestions for how the Bush administration can achieve this goal.

In this article, Ms. Goldenziel explores the growing controversy over no-funding provisions, state constitutional provisions that restrict state funding of religious institutions. These provisions, allegedly rooted in anti-Catholic bigotry, may threaten state implementation of school choice programs and faith-based initiatives involving public funding of religious social service organizations. Ms. Goldenziel argues that these no-funding provisions, which are commonly termed Blaine Amendments, Little Blaines, or Baby Blaines, are often unrelated to the failed federal Blaine Amendment, and do not always share the federal amendment's infamous anti-Catholic history. In the first study of its type, Ms. Goldenziel surveys the language and history of constitutional provisions prohibiting funding of religious institutions in all fifty states, and details the constitutional history and judicial interpretation of these provisions in eight representative states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, Vermont, and Maine. Ms. Goldenziel concludes that the fates of school vouchers and faith-based initiatives will not rest on the so-called Blaine Amendments, but on the ideological and jurisprudential tendencies of state judiciaries. Debate over school choice and charitable choice should therefore move from courtrooms to the political arena.