E/CN.4/1999/58/Add.1 page 8 (b) The recognition and practice of religion in State schools, notably school prayer. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 421 (1962), Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 US 38 (1985) and Lee v. Weisman, 112 S Ct 2649 (1992), the Supreme Court ruled that Government-sponsored prayer in State schools violates the “non-establishment” clause. The clause protects freedom of religion by preventing schools from telling how, when and what to pray and by allowing students to pray so long as they are not disruptive. Certain groups would like either to amend the Constitution or to have an interpretation that would permit devotional, though non-sectarian, prayers in State schools. President Clinton has declared that the First Amendment did not convert schools into “religion-free zones” and urged schools to allow all students to exercise their right to religious expression, including private and voluntary prayer at school; (c) Governmental financial assistance that may accrue to the benefit of religious schools. While in the Everson case and Board of Education v. Allen, 392 US 236 (1968) (government provision of free transportation and loans of textbooks to parochial school students) the Court recognized aid “to the students” but not to schools, in other cases, the Court considered that all assistance to children attending parochial schools relieved the schools themselves of some expenses or took a burden off parents and thereby encouraged them to send their children to parochial schools. Thus the “student benefit” test eventually yielded to the “Lemon test” (see paragraph 19). More lenient standards have been applied whereby the governmental assistance may go to an institution of higher education (in Tilton v. Richardson, 403 US 672 (1971), the Court considered it possible, with respect to an institution of higher learning, for the Government to assist the secular facet of the school without appearing to endorse its religious mission). 21. In view of the sensitivity of the question of freedom of religion and belief, and faced with a jurisprudence that, while very rich, is also contradictory and has very different dimensions in similar cases, several NGO representatives expressed the wish that the Supreme Court would develop a coherent and comprehensive framework for interpreting and applying the two constitutional clauses. Justices O'Connor and Breyer of the Supreme Court told the Special Rapporteur that the American legal system proceeded case by case, without necessarily spelling out major principles, and that the jurisprudence in the above-mentioned areas was vague and confused. They added that in a pluralist society containing both believers and non-believers, the principle of the separation of religion and the State was a wise one; similarly, the aim should be to be as generous as possible in relation to the practice of religion as long as it did no one else any harm. With regard to the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, described as “chaotic”, many non-governmental representatives stressed the need to remedy a kind of insensitivity towards religious minorities in particular (presumably due, in their view, to a certain secular approach which was indifferent to religion) and towards the principles of freedom of religion or belief as understood in international human rights law (Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee). They regretted that international law was often seen to affect America's foreign diplomatic relations, but not its domestic constitutional