School Vouchers: Inviting the Public into the Religious Square

Abstract

The Essay addresses from a children’s-rights perspective whether states should provide vouchers for use at religious and other private schools and whether significant regulation should be attached to vouchers. Vouchers create the potential for unprecedented state control over activities of religious organizations, precisely because the recipients of the service that the state is supporting are children rather than adults. The essay explains why, in the case of children's schooling, the state's entrance into the religious arena is, on the whole, a good thing and in fact long overdue.

Keywords: vouchers, religion, parents' rights, schooling, religious schools, liberalism, church-state separation, free exercise, Establishment Clause, equal protection, children's rights