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"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
Separation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others.
In his The Spirit of Law, Montesquieu maintained that the separation of state powers should be by its service to the people's liberty: legislative, executive and judicial, [94] [95] while also emphasizing that the idea of separation had for its purpose the even distribution of authority among the several branches of government. [96]
As James Madison, prior to becoming the fourth U.S. president in an 1803 letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, stated: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to ...
The phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to Baptists from Danbury, Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper soon thereafter. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:
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Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the Constitution and civics education written by Paul G. Summers, retired judge and state attorney general.. Smart and clairvoyant ...
A 1796 portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. The thought of the United States without George Washington as its president caused concern among many Americans. Thomas Jefferson disagreed with many of Washington's policies and later led the Democratic-Republicans in opposition to many Federalist policies, but he joined his political rival Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalists ...