The principal of a government-run school in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district has been suspended by the state's education department after right-wing groups reportedly complained to the police about a prayer song sung by the children.
and there was a strong focus on originalism in terms of understanding the constitution. >> and originalism is seen as the right way to interpret the constitution? >> by way of what we were taught, yes. [inaudible] yes. >> right, so this suggests the supreme court is going against the founders original vision, in engel v vitale, the ending of school prayer. that scene is moving away from the principles of america? >> there is a slide here, where he goes to talk about the ending of originalism. >> it's this one. interpreting the constitution. and who is that? >> scalia, justice scalia, who is probably the most notorious in the modern supreme court for being an originalist. >> yeah. >> and kind of the more conservative court -- here, they only mention
of school prayer. that's seen as moving away from the principles of america? >> there is a slide here, where he goes on to talk about the ending of originalism. >> it's this one, interpreting the constitution. and who is that? >> scalia, justice scalia, who is probably the most notorious in the modern supreme court for being an originalist. >> yeah. >> and kind of the more conservative court -- here, they only mention originalism. there is no mention of any other justices in this slide, just him and just originalism, which i think is a disservice. i think that if we are going to talk about it, we have to bring up all the different sides. we have to make sure we are
that might not be what the constitution was saying, and there was a strong focus on originalism in terms of kind of understanding the constitution. >> and originalism is seen as the right way to interpret the constitution? >> by way of what we were taught at this training, yes. >> right. so this suggests that the supreme court is going against the founders' original vision, in engel vertale, which is the ending of school prayer, that's seen as maybe a bad development, moving away from the founding principles of america. >> uh-huh. there's a slide somewhere in here where he goes to talk about originalism and interpreting -- >> yes, it's this one. >> interpreting the constitution. who's that? >> scalia, justice scalia, who is probably the most notorious in the modern supreme court for being an originalist, and a more
regulating abortion access. noticing some can herons here? the annex two alum sawyer is not surprised. in his new piece entitled, the constitution is whatever the right-wing says it is. adam sawyer writes the current majorities approaches itself a kind of undead constitutionalism -- one in which the dictates of the constitution retrospectively shift with whatever fox news happens to be furious about. legal outcomes preferred by today's american right conveniently turned out to be with the founding fathers wanted all along. joining me now is adam sawyer, it's good to have you here with us. it's a piece that i read this week and i felt like i was totally in agreement with what you are saying. so i wanted to talk to you about this. you know, let's talk about the courts undead constitutionalism a little bit and what it means through the lens of some of the more high-profile cases we saw this term. walk us through for example the school prayer case that was just decided, the conservatives ruled 6 to 3 to reduce the separation between church and state.
where coaches and teachers can, on public property, lead students in prayer. charles, that is de facto costs coercive of the students who either don't share the religion with their teacher or the couch, or even if they do, they don't use to make a big splash-y public display of it. they chose to do it in private. i think it ultimately threatens everyone's right to practice whatever religion they choose, or no religion at all. the village of schools, which can now get u.s. tax dollars or school prayer case, roe v. wade which let's just not say we can extract the religious undertones of that from the opinion. it threatens everybody. i think there is no stopping the supreme court justices the way we have to get out of it is by just kind of attacking the
honest in his concurrence. instead if you pull out substantive due process in an enumerated rights, everything else is really subject to attack. we are already seeing that happen a week after jobs. >> i want to pull back a little bit and taken the big picture. what do you think the impact of this course long term is on democracy as we know it? >> given that so many of their opinions seem to be either overtly based in religion or, sort of, thinly veiled religiously driven opinions. it really does feel like they view the constitution as little more than a call insult to the bible. i think it is going to threaten everyone. when you look at the decisions like school prayer, right?
interested in incrementalism. >> you're right. look at john roberts, solid conservative, we saw it in the second amendment in the religious liberty case of this term. he is unwilling to go as fast and as far as the trump nominees. they are looking at the law in a completely different way. look at the roe case. he was looking at roberts wanted to seeing some more incremental. he said, okay, let's allow the mississippi law, but let's leave roe for now. that had no takers on the conservative side. they have left him behind, and they're now moving really quickly in other areas as we're going to see next term. >> i wanted to show folks, these are the major decisions that this court has handed down. borg rights, gun rights, school prayer, criminal justice, and on regulations, this epa ruling on curbing carbon emissions, but the next term is no less big. affirmative action, they are taking on gerrymandering in north carolina, redistricting in