Fordham Law School FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History Faculty Scholarship 1999 Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames Marc Arkin Fordham University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Marc Arkin, Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames, 47 Buff. L. Rev. 763 (1999) Available at: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/712 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The orF dham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of FLASH: The orF dham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames MARC M. ARKINt INTRODUCTION On August 20, 1789, Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames rose to address the House of Representatives in one of his rare contributions to the debate on the Bill of Rights.' The day before, sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the House had concluded its brief discussion of the proposed religion amendment to the federal Constitution by agreeing to New Hampshire Representative Samuel Livermore's formula that "Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing t Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law. I would like to thank Martin Flaherty, Philip Hamburger, Douglas Laycock, Henry Monaghan, Edward Purcell, Jack Rakove, Conrad E.