Table of contents

1. Ecclesiastical doctrine's interest in the U.S. reality in the context of the current debate on the sovereignty crisis and the relevance of the law/religion relationship - 2. Recent strains of U.S. separatism: the federal Supreme Court grappling with the problem of public display of the Ten Commandments - 3. The U.S. separatist option and its significance: peculiarities of the origins and permanence of an essential "favor religionis" - 4. The essential lines of the federal jurisprudential development on the Separation Clause - 5. In particular, the Supreme Court's acquisitions with regard to the symbolic presence of the religious in the public space - 6. The significance of the federal Supreme Court's decisions between the substance of the solutions adopted and the relevance of individual opinions - 7. The affirmation of the legitimacy of the public display of the Ten Commandments in Van Orden v. Perry between recognition of religious significance and its possible civil relevance: the incidence of tradition - 8. The alternative route in the assessment of the civil relevance of the religious reference: the peculiarities of the contexts and methods of the display - 9. The concomitant recognition of the illegitimacy of the display in Mc. Creary County et Al. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky et Al.: decisiveness of the assessment on the context - 10. The anchoring of the Court's decisions to profiles of a substantive nature (in this case, requirements for the protection of freedom of conscience and the preservation of religious peace) as a figure of U.S. separatism, reason, and limit of the claim of federal state rights. Brief considerations and perspectives of inquiry