This collection of essays by Paul Freund, written over the past ten years, is divided into three parts. The first presents an appraisal of recent movements in constitutional law, putting contemporary criticism of the Supreme Court in historical perspective. The second part undertakes an analysis of the meaning of justice and rationality in judicial decisions, drawing on a wide range of illustrative cases. In the third group of essays, the author turns to the work of a number of distinguished judges—among them Chief Justice Stone and Justices Brandeis, Frankfurter, Jackson, and Black—and seeks to interpret their diverse approaches to the judicial function. Throughout the book, Freund is concerned with values in conflict, and the possibilities of their accommodation through the resources of the legal process.

In “Constitutional Mandates and Choices,” Paul Freund discusses the recent Supreme Court school-prayer decisions and the Constitution. Acknowledging the need for instilling tradition, morality, and reverence—the “religious component” called for by many—Freund still maintains that “the school-prayer decisions are more important for the doors they leave open than for those they shut. The study of religious tradition, training in moral analysis, and the cultivation of sensibilities beyond the intellectual are all left open and beckoning… Today the need is not to reform the First Amendment but to examine and reform our ideas and practices of moral education in the schools.”

After presenting a brief historical description of religious education in our Western Judeo-Christian civilization, and outlining the present situation in our public schools, Robert Ulich, in “The Historical Present,” declares that if by “religion” we do not mean allegiance to a particular creed, then, “whatever is the decision of the Supreme Court, it will never be able to divorce the religious from the educational spheres in our education system.”