cases are settled by the court. While later cases rely on a series of rather well outlined tests, the language of earlier cases "may have contained too sweeping utterances on aspects of these clauses that seemed clear in relation to the particular cased but have limited meaning as general principles." It is also important to recall that the "purpose of the religion clauses was to state an objective, not to write a statue." The concept of neutrality itself is a "coat of many colors," and three standards have emerged as tests of the Establishment Clause validity. The first two standards were part of the same composition. "The test may be stated as follows: what are the purpose and the primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement of inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution. That is to say that to withstand the strictures of the Establishment Clause there must be secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion." The third test is question to whether the governmental programs results in "an excessive government entanglement with religion. The questions are whether the involvement is excessive, and whether it is a continuing one calling for official and continuing surveillance leading to an impermissible degree of entanglement." The three of these tests were put together and restated in Justice Burger's opinion for the Lemon v. Kurtzman case and are referred to as the Lemon tests. At one time the tests had been used frequently by all of the Justices, they had been difficult to apply and have recently been under attack by some Justices. In conclusion, with increasing frequency they haven't been applied at all by the Court. While the usage of the tests have been uncertain the Lemon tests nonetheless have served for twenty years as the standard measure of Establishment Clause validity and ex...
