30 minutes

During oral arguments, each side has approximately 30 minutes to present its case, however, attorneys are not required to use the entire time. The petitioner argues first, then the respondent. If the petitioner reserves time for rebuttal, the petitioner speaks last.

Unless the Court directs otherwise, each side is allowed one-half hour for argument. Counsel is not required to use all the allotted time.

Opinion of the Court Kurtzman and the three-part “Lemon test”. The Court concluded that because “requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school rooms has no secular legislative purpose,” it is unconstitutional.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16) is the ninth commandment (the designation varies between religions) of the Ten Commandments, which are widely understood as moral imperatives by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant scholars.

The Free Exercise Clause . . . withdraws from legislative power, state and federal, the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of religion. Its purpose is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions there by civil authority.

Perry (2005) In Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a monument depicting the Ten Commandments in an Austin, Texas, public park did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Challenges to religion in schools grew in the Twentieth Century for two reasons: The growth of public schools in the twentieth century, combined with the Supreme Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply First Amendment limitations to the states.