Engel v. Vitale

Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled ‘state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day - even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited’.[1] Many consider this decision to have been one of the most significant events in modern American history. Many conservative legal scholars criticized this ruling.

For example, Erwin Griswold, dean of the Harvard Law School, said in a major speech that the Court had no authority to prohibit prayer in public school:

Congress had made no law [as required by the text of the First Amendment, and] those who wrote the 'establishment of religion' clause might be rather perplexed by the use which has been made of it in 1962. ... [I]t was unfortunate that the Court decided the case, one way or the other [because] there are some matters which are essentially local in nature ... to be worked out by the people themselves in their own communities. ... In a country which has a great tradition of tolerance, is it not important that minorities, who have benefited so greatly from that tolerance, should be tolerant, too?

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