1.
American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft
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American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit filed on behalf of a formerly unknown Internet Service Provider owner by the American Civil Liberties Union against the U. S. federal government. In 2010, it was revealed that John Doe was in fact Nicholas Merrill of Calyx Internet Access, in September 2004, Judge Victor Marrero of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York struck down the NSL provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. This prompted Congress to amend the law to allow limited judicial review of NSLs, the appeal was dismissed by Doe I v. Gonzales,449 F. Gonzales. This is not yet enforced, pending a possible government appeal, according to government secrecy rules the ACLU still could not disclose which ISP was served with the request to produce documents. This prompted the ACLU to challenge the law itself. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and enacted in 1986, the bill permitted the FBI to obtain customer records from telephone, the Court subsequently found section 2709 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act unconstitutional. It reasoned that it could not find in the provision an implied right for the receiving the subpoena to challenge it in court as is constitutionally required. The finding of unconstitutionality essentially dismisses any claimed presumptive legal need for secrecy in regard to terrorism cases. The USA PATRIOT Act is affected if the limits on NSLs in terrorism cases also apply to non-terrorism cases such as those authorized by the Act. The government was expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, and until the court ruling is reviewed. On August 10,2010, after 6 years Nicholas Merrill was partially released from his gag order and allowed to reveal his identity, although he could not reveal what information the FBI sought from him. This was 3 years after Merrill won a liberty award from the ACLU, Merrill has since founded the nonprofit Calyx Institute to provide education and research on privacy issues. The court order will go into effect 90 days after the initial ruling, warrant canary Court decision on ACLU web site, pdf-file Doe v. Holder, Internet Service Providers NSL, ACLU
2.
Supreme Court of the United States
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The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court of the United States. In the legal system of the United States, the Supreme Court is the interpreter of federal constitutional law. The Court normally consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight justices who are nominated by the President. Once appointed, justices have life tenure unless they resign, retire, in modern discourse, the justices are often categorized as having conservative, moderate, or liberal philosophies of law and of judicial interpretation. Each justice has one vote, and while many cases are decided unanimously, the Court meets in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C. The Supreme Court is sometimes referred to as SCOTUS, in analogy to other acronyms such as POTUS. The ratification of the United States Constitution established the Supreme Court in 1789 and its powers are detailed in Article Three of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the court specifically established by the Constitution. The Court first convened on February 2,1790, by which five of its six initial positions had been filled. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, in its first session, he Supreme Court convened for the first time at the Royal Exchange Building on Broad Street and they had no cases to consider. After a week of inactivity, they adjourned until September, the sixth member was not confirmed until May 12,1790. Because the full Court had only six members, every decision that it made by a majority was made by two-thirds. However, Congress has always allowed less than the Courts full membership to make decisions, under Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, the Court heard few cases, its first decision was West v. Barnes, a case involving a procedural issue. The Courts power and prestige grew substantially during the Marshall Court, the Marshall Court also ended the practice of each justice issuing his opinion seriatim, a remnant of British tradition, and instead issuing a single majority opinion. Also during Marshalls tenure, although beyond the Courts control, the impeachment, the Taney Court made several important rulings, such as Sheldon v. Nevertheless, it is primarily remembered for its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped precipitate the Civil War. In the Reconstruction era, the Chase, Waite, and Fuller Courts interpreted the new Civil War amendments to the Constitution, during World War II, the Court continued to favor government power, upholding the internment of Japanese citizens and the mandatory pledge of allegiance. Nevertheless, Gobitis was soon repudiated, and the Steel Seizure Case restricted the pro-government trend, the Warren Court dramatically expanded the force of Constitutional civil liberties. It held that segregation in public schools violates equal protection and that traditional legislative district boundaries violated the right to vote
3.
United States Reports
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The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. Opinions of the court in each case, prepended with a prepared by the Reporter of Decisions. For lawyers, citations to United States Reports are the reference for Supreme Court decisions. Following Bluebook, a commonly accepted citation protocol, the case Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, for example, would be cited as, Brown v. Bd. of Educ. The early volumes of the United States Reports were originally published privately by the individual Supreme Court Reporters, as was the practice in England, the reports were designated by the names of the reporters who compiled them, Dallass Reports, Cranchs Reports, etc. The decisions appearing in the entire first volume and most of the volume of United States Reports are not decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts, dating from the colonial period, alexander Dallas, a lawyer and journalist, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume and this would come to be known as the first volume of Dallas Reports. Dallas continued to collect and publish Pennsylvania decisions in a volume of his Reports. When the Supreme Court began hearing cases, he added those cases to his reports, starting towards the end of the volume,2 Dallas Reports. Dallas went on to publish a total of four volumes of decisions during his tenure as Reporter, when the Supreme Court moved to Washington, D. C. in 1800, Dallas remained in Philadelphia, and William Cranch took over as unofficial reporter of decisions. In 1817, Congress made the Reporter of Decisions an official, salaried position, in 1874, the U. S. government began to fund the reports publication, creating the United States Reports. The earlier, private reports were retroactively numbered volumes 1–90 of the United States Reports, therefore, decisions appearing in these early reports have dual citation forms, one for the volume number of the United States Reports, and one for the set of nominate reports. For example, the citation to McCulloch v. Maryland is 17 U. S.316
4.
William Rehnquist
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Considered a conservative, Rehnquist favored a conception of federalism that emphasized the Tenth Amendments reservation of powers to the states. Under this view of federalism the Court, for the first time since the 1930s, the last 11 years of Rehnquists term as chief justice marked the second-longest tenure of a single unchanging roster of the Supreme Court, exceeded only between February 1812 and September 1823. He is the justice in Supreme Court history. Rehnquist was born William Donald Rehnquist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 1,1924 and he grew up in the suburb of Shorewood. Rehnquist changed his name to Hubbs, a family name. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Sweden, Rehnquist graduated from Shorewood High School in 1942. He attended Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, for one quarter in the fall of 1942 and he served from March 1943 –1946, mostly in assignments in the United States. He was put into a program and assigned to Denison University until February 1944. He served three months at Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City, three months in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and then went to Hondo, Texas, for a few months. He was then chosen for training program, which began at Chanute Field, Illinois. The program was designed to teach the maintenance and repair of weather instruments, in the summer of 1945, Rehnquist went overseas as a weather observer in North Africa. After the war ended, Rehnquist attended Stanford University with assistance under the provisions of the G. I, in 1948, he received both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree in political science. In 1950, he attended Harvard University, where he received another Master of Arts and he later returned to Stanford, and graduated from the Stanford Law School in the same class as Sandra Day OConnor, with whom he would later serve on the Supreme Court. Rehnquist graduated first in his class, Rehnquist went to Washington, D. C. to work as a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme Court during the courts 1952–1953 term. Rehnquists 1952 memo, entitled A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases, Rehnquist said, I believe that the memorandum was prepared by me as a statement of Justice Jacksons tentative views for his own use. Justice Jackson did not ask law clerks to express his views and he expressed his own and they expressed theirs. That is what happened in this instance, however, the papers of Justices Douglas and Frankfurter indicate that Justice Jackson voted for Brown in 1954 only after changing his mind. However, Rehnquist acknowledged defending Plessy in arguments with fellow law clerks, several commentators have concluded that the memo reflected Rehnquists own views rather than those of Justice Jackson
5.
John Paul Stevens
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John Paul Stevens is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who served from December 19,1975, until his retirement on June 29,2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest justice then serving, the second-oldest serving justice in the history of the Court, and he was nominated by President Gerald Ford to replace the Courts longest-serving justice, William O. Douglas. Stevens is widely considered to have been on the side of the Court at the time of his retirement. Stevens served with three Chief Justices, Stevens was born on April 20,1920, in Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois, to a wealthy family. His paternal grandfather had formed a company and held real estate in Chicago. His father, Ernest James Stevens, was a lawyer who became a hotelier. He lost ownership of the hotels during the Great Depression and was convicted of embezzlement and his mother, Elizabeth Maude Stevens, was a high-school English teacher. Two of his three brothers also became lawyers. As a boy, Stevens attended the 1932 World Series baseball game in Chicagos Wrigley Field in which Babe Ruth called his shot, Stevens later recalled, Ruth did point to the center-field scoreboard. And he did hit the ball out of the park after he pointed with his bat, so it really happened. He also had the opportunity to meet several people of the era, including the famed aviators Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. The family lived in Hyde Park, and John Paul Stevens attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School. He subsequently obtained a bachelor of arts in English from the University of Chicago in 1941, while in college and he began work on his masters degree in English at the university in 1941, but soon decided to join the United States Navy. He enlisted on December 6,1941, one day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Stevens was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the codebreaking team whose work led to the downing of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamotos plane in 1943. Stevens married Elizabeth Jane Shereen in June 1942, divorcing her in 1979, he married Maryan Mulholland Simon that December. He has four children, John Joseph, Kathryn, Elizabeth, with the end of World War II, Stevens returned to Illinois, intending to return to his studies in English, but was persuaded by his brother Richard, who was a lawyer, to attend law school. Stevens enrolled in the Northwestern University School of Law in 1945 and he was a brilliant student, earning the highest GPA in the history of the law school. He received his J. D. in 1947, graduating cum laude
6.
Sandra Day O'Connor
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Sandra Day OConnor is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan until her retirement in 2006. She was the first woman to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to OConnors tenure on the Court, she was an elected official, upon her nomination to the Court, OConnor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. On July 1,2005, she announced her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of a successor, Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005, and joined the Court on January 31,2006. Considered a federalist and a moderate Republican, OConnor tended to each case narrowly without arguing for sweeping precedents. She most frequently sided with the conservative bloc, although in the latter years of her tenure. She often wrote concurring opinions that limited the reach of the majority holding and her majority opinions in landmark cases include Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. OConnor was Chancellor of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and she also served on the Board of Trustees for Colonial Williamsburg. Several publications have named OConnor among the most powerful women in the world, on August 12,2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States, by President Barack Obama. She was born in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Harry Alfred Day, a rancher and her sister was Ann Day, who served in the Arizona Legislature. She grew up on a ranch near Duncan, Arizona where she had to change automobile flat tires herself in dangerous environments. She later wrote a book with her brother, H. Alan Day, Lazy B, Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American West, about her childhood experiences on the ranch. For most of her schooling, OConnor lived in El Paso with her maternal grandmother, and attended school at the Radford School for Girls. She graduated sixth in her class at Austin High School in El Paso in 1946 and she attended Stanford University, where she received her B. A. in economics in 1950. She continued at the Stanford Law School for her LL. B and she has stated that she graduated third in her law school class, although Stanfords official position is that the law school did not rank students in 1952. On December 20,1952, six months after graduating law school. Her husband suffered from Alzheimers disease for twenty years until his death in 2009. After graduation from law school, at least forty law firms refused to interview her for a position as an attorney because she was a woman
7.
Antonin Scalia
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Antonin Gregory Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia was described as the anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Courts conservative wing. Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey and he attended Xavier High School in Manhattan and then college at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. He obtained his law degree from Harvard Law School and spent six years in a Cleveland law firm before becoming a law professor at the University of Virginia. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and he spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society. In 1982, Ronald Reagan appointed him as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in 1986, Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, becoming the first Italian-American justice and he was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas. He opposed affirmative action and other policies that treated minorities as special groups and he filed separate opinions in many cases and often castigated the Courts majority in his minority opinions using scathing language. Antonin Scalia was born on March 11,1936, in Trenton, New Jersey and his father, Salvatore Eugene Scalia, an Italian immigrant from Sommatino, Sicily, was a graduate student at Columbia University and clerk at the time of his sons birth. The elder Scalia would become a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College and his mother, Catherine Louise Scalia, was born in Trenton to Italian immigrant parents and worked as an elementary school teacher. In 1939, Scalia and his moved to the Elmhurst section of Queens, New York. He later stated that he spent much of his time on schoolwork and admitted, while a youth, he was also active as a Boy Scout and was part of Scoutings national honor society, the Order of the Arrow. Classmate and future New York State official William Stern remembered Scalia in his school days. He could have been a member of the Curia and he was the top student in the class. He was brilliant, way above everybody else, in 1953, Scalia enrolled at Georgetown University, where he graduated valedictorian and summa cum laude in 1957 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. While in college, he was a champion debater in Georgetowns Philodemic Society. He took his junior year abroad at the University of Fribourg, Scalia studied law at Harvard Law School, where he was a Notes Editor for the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1960, becoming a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University, the fellowship enabled him to travel throughout Europe during 1960–1961
8.
Anthony Kennedy
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Kennedy became the most senior Associate Justice on the court following the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Since the retirement of Sandra Day OConnor in 2006, he has been the swing vote on many of the Courts 5–4 decisions. He has authored the majority ruling in many of these cases, including Lawrence v. Texas, Boumediene v. Bush, Citizens United v. FEC, Kennedy was born and raised in an Irish Catholic family in Sacramento, California. He was the son of Anthony J. Kennedy, an attorney with a reputation for influence in the California legislature, and Gladys, as a boy, Kennedy came into contact with prominent politicians of the day, such as California Governor and later U. S. He served as a page in the California State Senate as a young man, Kennedy attended Stanford University, graduating with a B. A. after spending his senior year at the London School of Economics. He earned an LL. B cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1961, Kennedy has been married to Mary Davis since 1963, and they have three children. Kennedy was in practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963. In 1963, following his fathers death, he took over his fathers Sacramento practice, from 1965 to 1988, he was a Professor of Constitutional Law at McGeorge School of Law, at the University of the Pacific. He continues to teach law students at seminars during McGeorges European summer sessions in Salzburg and he remains Pacific McGeorges longest-serving active faculty member. During Kennedys time as a California law professor and attorney, he helped California Governor Ronald Reagan draft a state tax proposal. Kennedy has served in numerous positions during his career, including the California Army National Guard in 1961, Kennedy was unanimously confirmed by the U. S. Senate on March 20 and received his commission on March 24,1975. On November 11,1987, Kennedy was nominated to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Lewis F. Powell, Kennedy was then subjected to an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of his background, which he easily passed. In a lower court dissent that Kennedy had written before joining the Supreme Court, considering such conduct offensive and destructive of the family, Kennedy had written, indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the states hostility to it. It does not follow that each of those rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system, many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgias right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense. Kennedy said about Griswold v. Connecticut, I really think I would like to draw the line and he also discussed a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line thats drawn where the individual can tell the Government, Beyond this line you may not go
9.
David Souter
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David Hackett Souter is a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He served from October 1990 until his retirement in June 2009 and he was the only Justice during his time on the Court with extensive prior court experience outside of a federal appeals court. Following Souters retirement announcement in May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as his successor, Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on September 17,1939, the only child of Joseph Alexander Souter and Helen Adams Souter. At age 11, he moved with his family to their farm in Weare, in 1961, he graduated with an A. B. magna cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Magdalen College, Oxford and he then entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1966. As Assistant Attorney General he prosecuted criminal cases in the courts, in 1971, Warren Rudman, then the Attorney General of New Hampshire, selected Souter to be the Deputy Attorney General. Souter succeeded Rudman as New Hampshire Attorney General in 1976, in 1978, with the support of his friend Rudman, Souter was named an Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. As a judge on the Superior Court he heard cases in two counties and was noted for his tough sentencing, with four years of trial court experience, Souter was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in 1983. Shortly after George H. W. Bush was sworn in as President, Souter had had seven years of judicial experience at the appellate level, four years at the trial court level, and ten years with the Attorney Generals office. He was confirmed by unanimous consent of the Senate on April 27,1990, President George H. W. Bush originally considered appointing Clarence Thomas to Brennans seat, but decided that Thomas did not have enough experience as a judge. Souter was seen as a justice whose professional record in the state courts provoked little real controversy. Bush nominated Souter on July 25,1990, saying that he did not know Souters stances on abortion, affirmative action, Senate confirmation hearings were held beginning on September 13,1990. The National Organization for Women opposed Souters nomination and held a rally outside of the Senate during his confirmation hearings, the president of NOW, Molly Yard, testified that Souter would end freedom for women in this country. Souter was also opposed by the NAACP, which urged its 500,000 members to write letters to their senators asking them to no on the nomination. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts, despite the opposition, Souter won an easy confirmation compared to those of later appointees. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the nomination by a vote of 14–3, the Senate confirmed the nomination by a vote of 90–9, the nine senators voting against Souter included Ted Kennedy and John Kerry from Souters neighboring state of Massachusetts. These senators, along with seven others, painted Souter as a right-winger in the mold of Robert Bork and they based their claim on Souters friendships with many conservative politicians in New Hampshire. Souter opposed having cameras in the Supreme Court during oral arguments because he said questions would be out of context by the media
10.
Clarence Thomas
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Clarence Thomas is an American judge, lawyer, and government official who currently serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Thomas succeeded Thurgood Marshall and is the second African American to serve on the court, Thomas grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. In 1974, he was appointed an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri, in 1979, he became a legislative assistant to Senator John Danforth and in 1981 was appointed Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U. S. Department of Education. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He served in that role for 16 months and on July 1,1991, was nominated by Bush to fill Marshalls seat on the United States Supreme Court, the U. S. Senate ultimately confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48. Since joining the court, Thomas has taken a textualist approach, seeking to uphold the original meaning of the United States Constitution and he is generally viewed as the most conservative member of the court. Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia and he was the second of three children born to M. C. Thomas, a worker, and Leola Williams, a domestic worker. They were descendants of American slaves, and the family spoke Gullah as a first language, Thomass earliest-known ancestors were slaves named Sandy and Peggy who were born around the end of the 18th century and owned by wealthy Liberty County, Georgia planter Josiah Wilson. M. C. left his family when Thomas was two years old, Thomass mother worked hard but was sometimes paid only pennies per day. She had difficulty putting food on the table and was forced to rely on charity, after a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to live with his maternal grandparents in Savannah, Georgia. Thomas was seven when the family moved in with his grandfather, Myers Anderson. Living with his grandparents, Thomas enjoyed amenities such as indoor plumbing and his grandfather Myers Anderson had little formal education, but had built a thriving fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas calls his grandfather the greatest man I have ever known, when Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset. His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance, he would counsel Thomas to never let the sun catch you in bed, Thomas grandfather also impressed upon his grandsons the importance of getting a good education. Thomas was the black person at his high school in Savannah. He considered entering the priesthood at the age of 16, and he also briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. No one in Thomass family had attended college, Thomas has said that during his first year in seminary, he was one of only three or four blacks attending the school
11.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10,1993 and she is the second female justice and one of four female justices appointed on the Supreme Court. She is generally viewed as belonging to the wing of the Court. Ginsburg was one of the few women in her law school class, following law school, Ginsburg turned to academia. She was a professor at Rutgers School of Law–Newark and Columbia Law School, Ginsburg spent a considerable portion of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and womens rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Joan Ruth Bader is the daughter of Nathan and Celia Bader, Russian Jewish immigrants. The Baders older daughter, Marylin, died of meningitis at age 6 when Ruth was 14 months old, the family called Joan Ruth Kiki, a nickname Marylin had given her for being a kicky baby. When Kiki started school, Celia discovered that her daughters class had several other girls named Joan, although not devout, the Bader family belonged to East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative temple, where Ruth learned tenets of the Jewish faith and gained familiarity with the Hebrew language. At age thirteen, Ruth acted as the rabbi at a Jewish summer program at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva. Her mother took a role in her education, taking her to the library often. Celia had been a student in her youth, graduating from high school at age 15. Celia wanted to see her daughter get more of an education, Ruth attended James Madison High School, whose law program later dedicated a courtroom in her honor. Celia struggled with cancer throughout Ruths high school years, and died the day before Ruths high school graduation, Bader attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi. While at Cornell she met Martin D. Ginsburg at age 17 and she graduated from Cornell with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23,1954. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the female student in her graduating class. At age 21, she worked for the Social Security Administration office in Oklahoma and she gave birth to a daughter in 1955
12.
Stephen Breyer
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Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Breyer is generally associated with the liberal side of the Court. Following a clerkship with Supreme Court Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1964, Breyer became well known as a law professor and lecturer at Harvard Law School, there he specialized in administrative law, writing a number of influential textbooks that remain in use today. Breyer was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Anne A. and Irving Gerald Breyer, Irving Breyer was legal counsel for the San Francisco Board of Education. Both Breyer and his brother, Charles, who is a federal district judge, are Eagle Scouts of San Franciscos Troop 14. Breyers paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Romania to the United States, settling in Cleveland, in 1955, Breyer graduated from Lowell High School. He is also fluent in French, in 1967, he married the Hon. Joanna Freda Hare, a psychologist and member of the British aristocracy, as the youngest daughter of John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham. The Breyers have three children, Chloe, an Episcopal priest and author of The Close, Nell. Breyer served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg during the 1964 term and he was a special assistant to the United States Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust from 1965 to 1967 and an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973. Breyer was a counsel to the U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1974 to 1975. He worked closely with the chairman of the committee, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Breyer was a lecturer, assistant professor, and law professor at Harvard Law School starting in 1967. He taught there until 1994, also serving as a professor at Harvards Kennedy School of Government from 1977 to 1980, at Harvard, Breyer was known as a leading expert on administrative law. While there, he wrote two influential books on deregulation, Breaking the Vicious Circle, Toward Effective Risk Regulation and Regulation. In 1970, Breyer wrote The Uneasy Case for Copyright, one of the most widely cited skeptical examinations of copyright, Breyer was a visiting professor at the College of Law in Sydney, Australia, the University of Rome, and the Tulane University Law School. From 1980 to 1994, Breyer was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, he was the courts Chief Judge from 1990 to 1994. In the last days of President Jimmy Carters administration, on November 13,1980, Carter nominated Breyer to the First Circuit, and the U. S. Senate confirmed him on December 9,1980, by an 80–10 vote. He served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States between 1990 and 1994 and the United States Sentencing Commission between 1985 and 1989, in 1993, President Bill Clinton considered him for the seat vacated by Byron White that ultimately went to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Breyers appointment came shortly thereafter, however, following the retirement of Harry Blackmun in 1994, Breyer was confirmed by the U. S. Senate in an 87 to 9 vote and took his seat August 3,1994
13.
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
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It was adopted on December 15,1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was originally proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification, initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court overturned English common law precedent to increase the burden of proof for defamation and libel suits, commercial speech, however, is less protected by the First Amendment than political speech, and is therefore subject to greater regulation. The Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, in Near v. Minnesota and New York Times v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint—pre-publication censorship—in almost all cases. The Petition Clause protects the right to all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, eight of the other thirteen states made similar pledges. However, these declarations were generally considered mere admonitions to state legislatures, after a brief debate, Masons proposal was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations. For the constitution to be ratified, however, nine of the thirteen states were required to approve it in state conventions, opposition to ratification was partly based on the Constitutions lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. Constitution was eventually ratified by all thirteen states and this language was greatly condensed by Congress, and passed the House and Senate with almost no recorded debate, complicating future discussion of the Amendments intent. The First Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was submitted to the states for ratification on September 25,1789, and adopted on December 15,1791. In Reynolds v. United States the Supreme Court used these words to declare that it may be accepted almost as a declaration of the scope. Congress was deprived of all power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. In these two sentences is found the distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, Massachusetts, for example, was officially Congregationalist until the 1830s. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, in the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and State. That wall must be high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach, in Torcaso v. Watkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution prohibits states and the federal government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office
14.
United States Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court of the United States. In the legal system of the United States, the Supreme Court is the interpreter of federal constitutional law. The Court normally consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight justices who are nominated by the President. Once appointed, justices have life tenure unless they resign, retire, in modern discourse, the justices are often categorized as having conservative, moderate, or liberal philosophies of law and of judicial interpretation. Each justice has one vote, and while many cases are decided unanimously, the Court meets in the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C. The Supreme Court is sometimes referred to as SCOTUS, in analogy to other acronyms such as POTUS. The ratification of the United States Constitution established the Supreme Court in 1789 and its powers are detailed in Article Three of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the court specifically established by the Constitution. The Court first convened on February 2,1790, by which five of its six initial positions had been filled. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, in its first session, he Supreme Court convened for the first time at the Royal Exchange Building on Broad Street and they had no cases to consider. After a week of inactivity, they adjourned until September, the sixth member was not confirmed until May 12,1790. Because the full Court had only six members, every decision that it made by a majority was made by two-thirds. However, Congress has always allowed less than the Courts full membership to make decisions, under Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, the Court heard few cases, its first decision was West v. Barnes, a case involving a procedural issue. The Courts power and prestige grew substantially during the Marshall Court, the Marshall Court also ended the practice of each justice issuing his opinion seriatim, a remnant of British tradition, and instead issuing a single majority opinion. Also during Marshalls tenure, although beyond the Courts control, the impeachment, the Taney Court made several important rulings, such as Sheldon v. Nevertheless, it is primarily remembered for its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped precipitate the Civil War. In the Reconstruction era, the Chase, Waite, and Fuller Courts interpreted the new Civil War amendments to the Constitution, during World War II, the Court continued to favor government power, upholding the internment of Japanese citizens and the mandatory pledge of allegiance. Nevertheless, Gobitis was soon repudiated, and the Steel Seizure Case restricted the pro-government trend, the Warren Court dramatically expanded the force of Constitutional civil liberties. It held that segregation in public schools violates equal protection and that traditional legislative district boundaries violated the right to vote
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American Civil Liberties Union
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It works through litigation and lobbying. The ACLU has 1,000,000 members and a budget of over $100 million. Local affiliates of the ACLU are active in almost all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the ACLU provides legal assistance in cases when it considers civil liberties to be at risk. In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions that have established by its board of directors. The two organizations share office space and employees, during the 1930s, the ACLU started to engage in work combating police misconduct and supporting Native American rights. Many of the ACLUs cases involved the defense of Communist party members, in 1940, the ACLU leadership voted to exclude Communists from its leadership positions, a decision rescinded in 1968. During World War II, the ACLU defended Japanese-American citizens, unsuccessfully trying to prevent their forcible relocation to internment camps, during the Cold War, the ACLU headquarters was dominated by anti-Communists, but many local affiliates defended members of the Communist Party. By 1964, membership had risen to 80,000, in the 1960s, the ACLU continued its decades-long effort to enforce separation of church and state. It defended several anti-war activists during the Vietnam War, in the 1970s and 1980s, the ACLU ventured into new legal areas, involving the rights of homosexuals, students, prisoners, and the poor. Fundraising and membership spiked after the 2016 election, the ACLUs current membership is more than 1.2 million, the ACLU is led by a president and an executive director, Susan N. Herman and Anthony Romero, respectively, in 2015. The president acts as chairman of the ACLUs board of directors, leads fundraising, the executive director manages the day-to-day operations of the organization. The board of directors consists of 80 persons, including representatives from each state affiliate, the organization has its headquarters in 125 Broad Street, a 40-story skyscraper located in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The leadership of the ACLU does not always agree on policy decisions, in 1937, an internal debate erupted over whether to defend Henry Fords right to distribute anti-union literature. In 1939, a debate took place over whether to prohibit communists from serving in ACLU leadership roles. During the early 1950s and Cold War McCarthyism, the board was divided on whether to defend communists, in 1968, a schism formed over whether to represent Dr. Spocks anti-war activism. In 1973, there was conflict over whether to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. In 2005, there was conflict about whether or not a gag rule should be imposed on ACLU employees to prevent publication of internal disputes. Membership dues are treated as donations, members choose the amount they pay annually, in the year ending March 31,2014, the combined expenses of the ACLU and ACLU Foundation were $133.4 million, spent on programs, management, and fundraising
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Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition
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By striking down these two provisions, the Court rejected an invitation to increase the amount of speech that would be categorically outside the protection of the First Amendment. Prior case law had established two relevant categories of speech that were outside the protection of the First Amendment, in Miller v. California,413 U. S.15, the Court had held that the First Amendment allowed the government to restrict obscenity. And in New York v. Ferber,458 U. S.747, the Court extended Ferber to mere possession of child pornography in Osborne v. Ohio,495 U. S.103. Before 1996, Congress defined child pornography with reference to the Ferber standard, in passing the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, Congress added the two categories of speech challenged in this case to its definition of child pornography. The Ninth Circuit reversed, reasoning that the government could not prohibit speech merely because of its tendency to persuade its viewers to engage in illegal activity. It ruled that the CPPA was substantially overbroad because it prohibited material that was neither obscene nor produced by exploiting real children, the court declined to reconsider the case en banc. The government asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and it agreed, ultimately, the Supreme Court agreed with the Ninth Circuit. Abridging the freedom of speech, and imposing a criminal sanction on protected speech is an example of speech suppression. At the same time, sexual abuse of children is a most serious crime, Congress may pass valid laws to protect children from abuse, and it has. The great difficulty with the two provisions of the CPPA at issue in this case was that they included categories of speech other than obscenity and child pornography, the Court concluded that the CPPA prohibits speech despite its serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. In particular, it prohibits the depiction of teenagers engaged in sexual activity. This is inconsistent with an essential First Amendment rule, The artistic merit of a work does not depend on the presence of an explicit scene. Thus, the CPPA prohibited speech for a different reason than anti-child pornography laws, laws prohibiting the distribution and possession of child pornography ban speech because of the manner in which it is produced, regardless of its serious literary or artistic value. But speech prohibited by the CPPA records no crime and creates no victims by its production, Child pornography is not necessarily without value, but it is illegal because of the harm that making and distributing it necessarily inflicts upon children. The CPPA would eliminate this distinction and punish people for engaging in what had heretofore been a legal alternative, the Government countered that without the CPPA, child molesters might use virtual child pornography to seduce children. The First Amendment draws a distinction between words and deeds, and does not tolerate banning of mere words simply because those words could lead to bad deeds. Although the CPPAs objective was to prohibit conduct, it went well beyond that goal by restricting speech available to law-abiding adults. And if the goal was to eliminate the market for all child pornography, the burden should not, however, fall on the speaker to prove that his speech is lawful, instead of on the government to prove that it is not
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Miller v. California
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It is now referred to as the three-prong standard or the Miller test, with the third prong being informally known by the initialism and mnemonic device SLAPS or the term SLAPS test. The brochure used in the mailing contained graphic images from the books, five of the brochures were mailed to a restaurant in Newport Beach, California. The owner and his mother opened the envelope and seeing the brochures, Miller was arrested and charged with violating California Penal Code 311. California lawmakers wrote the statute based on two previous Supreme Court obscenity cases, Memoirs v. Massachusetts and Roth v. United States, Miller was tried by jury in the Superior Court of Orange County. At the conclusion of the phase, the judge instructed the jury to evaluate the evidence by the community standards of California. The jury returned a guilty verdict, Miller argued that only a national standard for obscenity could be applied. The appellate division rejected the argument and affirmed the jury verdict, Miller then filed an appeal with the California Court of Appeal for the Third District, which declined to review. Miller applied to the Supreme Court for certiorari, which was granted, oral arguments were heard in January 1972. The U. S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to Miller because the California law was based on its two previous obscenity cases which the Court wanted to revisit. Chief Justice Warren Burger came to the Court in 1969 believing that the Courts obscenity jurisprudence was misguided and governments should be given more leeway to ban obscene materials. Decision of the case was contentious, and Miller was put over for reargument for October term 1972, since the Courts decision in Roth v. United States,354 U. S.476, the Court had struggled to define what constituted constitutionally unprotected obscene material. Thus, works by Balzac, Flaubert, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence were banned based on isolated passages, only material now meeting this test could be banned as obscene. In Memoirs v. Massachusetts,383 U. S. Miller had based his appeal in California on Memoirs v. Massachusetts, the question before the court was whether the sale and distribution of obscene material was protected under the First Amendments guarantee of Freedom of Speech. The Court ruled that it was not and it indicated that obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment, especially that of hardcore pornography, thereby reaffirming part of Roth. However, the Court acknowledged the inherent dangers of undertaking to regulate any form of expression and this obscenity test overturns the definition of obscenity set out in the Memoirs decision, which held that all ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance. Have the full protection of the guaranties and that obscenity was that which was utterly without redeeming social importance, the Miller decision vacated the jury verdict and remanded the case back to the California Superior Court. Miller provided states greater freedom in prosecuting alleged purveyors of obscene material because, for the first time since Roth, hundreds of obscenity prosecutions went forward after Miller, and the Supreme Court began denying review of these state actions after years of reviewing many obscenity convictions. A companion case to Miller, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, in the years since Miller, many localities have cracked down on adult theatres and bookstores, as well as nude dancing, through restrictive zoning ordinances and public nudity laws
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Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union
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Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union,521 U. S. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision and this was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet. The ACLU argued that parts of the act were facially unconstitutional. Section 561 of the act required that any facial challenges be heard by a panel of three judges, that panel granted the injunction. Because the act also permitted appeals to be directly by the Supreme Court. In Ginsberg v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that material that is not obscene may nonetheless be harmful for children, and its marketing may be regulated. In Reno v. Finally, in Renton v. Playtime Theatres, the government argued that the CDA was an attempt to institute a sort of cyberzoning on the Internet. In Reno v. ACLU, however, the Court ruled that the time, place, and manner regulation that Renton had enacted was not similar to the CDA, which was a content-based blanket restriction on speech. In a nuanced decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote of the differences between Internet communication and previous types of communication that the Court had ruled on. In conclusion, he wrote, We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive. That burden on speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. It is true that we have recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults, as we have explained, the Government may not reduc the adult population. to. only what is fit for children. The rest of the CDA, including the safe harbor provision protecting Internet service providers from being liable for the words of others, was not affected by this decision and remains law. Through the use of rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, if such technology could be introduced, they wrote, zoning portions of the Internet to prohibit adult content could be as constitutional as such zoning is in the physical world. The two dissented in part, writing they would have invalidated a portion of the two CDA provisions under review
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Communications Act of 1934
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The Act replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission. It also transferred regulation of telephone services from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the FCC. On January 3,1996, the 104th Congress of the United States amended or repealed sections of the Communications Act of 1934 with the new Telecommunications Act of 1996 and it was the first major overhaul of American telecommunications policy in nearly 62 years. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Daniel C, roper, Secretary of Commerce, to appoint an interdepartmental committee for studying electronic communications. The Committee reported that the service, as far as congressional action is involved. A recommendation was made for the establishment of a new agency that would regulate all interstate and foreign communication by wire and radio, telegraphy, telephone, on February 26,1934, the President sent a special message to Congress urging the creation of the Federal Communications Commission. The following day Senator Clarence Dill and Representative Sam Rayburn introduced bills to carry out this recommendation, the Senate Bill passed the House on June 1,1934, and the conference report was adopted by both houses eight days later. The Communications Act was signed by President Roosevelt on June 1934, particular parts of it became effective July 1,1934, other parts on July 11,1934. And thus the FCC was born, the Communications Act of 1934 followed the precedents of trial cases set under the Commerce Clause of the U. S. Constitution, regulating commerce among the several states. In 1914 the U. S. Supreme Court set limits on price discrimination that were effectively interstate commerce in Houston, the railway was setting lower prices for intrastate carriers within Texas while charging more for carriers that were going through or out of the state. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ICC, and maximum prices were set to limit the damage that other states could face due to price discrimination, Communications technology was determined to be an interstate good. The goal was to have telephone and broadcasting regulated with the jurisdiction in a way similar to that in which the ICC regulates the railways. The act did not, however, allow for price regulation through the FCC due to lobbying efforts from the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Currently there are some challenges and proposed changes to the Act, the company CellAntenna has sued the FCC claiming that the Homeland Security Act of 2002 did override the Communications Act of 1934. As the law today, the 1934 Communications Act prohibits local and state law enforcement from using jamming devices to thwart criminal. In addition, there is talk about the need for an Internet kill switch and this act removes the powers established in the 1934 Act and gives the President the authority to stop the Internet in case of a cyber attack. S. Educators wanted more of radio to be given to them, they had termed a special interest by the Federal Radio Commission. The Wagner-Hatfield amendment would have given 25% of all radio broadcasting facilities to non-profit institutions and organizations and it would also have allowed these educational stations to sell advertising in order to become self-sufficient
20.
Society of Friends
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Quakers are members of a historically Christian group of religious movements generally known as the Religious Society of Friends. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, to differing extents, the different movements that make up the Religious Society of Friends/Friends Church avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2007, there were about 359,000 adult Quakers, in 2012, there were 377,055 adult Quakers. Some meetings of both types have Recorded Ministers in their meetings—Friends recognised for their gift of vocal ministry, the first Quakers lived in mid-17th century England. The movement arose from the Legatine-Arians and other dissenting Protestant groups, some of these early Quaker ministers were women. They emphasized a personal and direct experience of Christ, acquired through both direct religious experience and the reading and studying of the Bible. Quakers focused their private life on developing behaviour and speech reflecting emotional purity, in the past, Quakers were known for their use of thee as an ordinary pronoun, refusal to participate in war, plain dress, refusal to swear oaths, opposition to slavery, and teetotalism. & J. Clark and the big three British confectionery makers Cadbury, Rowntree and Frys, and philanthropic efforts, including abolition of slavery, prison reform, during and after the English Civil War many dissenting Christian groups emerged, including the Seekers and others. A young man named George Fox was dissatisfied with the teachings of the Church of England and he had a vision on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, England, in which he believed that the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered. Following this he travelled around England, the Netherlands, and Barbados preaching and teaching with the aim of converting new adherents to his faith, the central theme of his Gospel message was that Christ has come to teach his people himself. His followers considered themselves to be the restoration of the true Christian church, in 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to George Foxs autobiography, Bennet was the first that called us Quakers and it is thought that George Fox was referring to Isaiah 66,2 or Ezra 9,4. Thus, the name Quaker began as a way of ridiculing George Foxs admonition, Quakerism gained a considerable following in England and Wales, and the numbers increased to a peak of 60,000 in England and Wales by 1680. This was relaxed after the Declaration of Indulgence and stopped under the Act of Toleration 1689, with the restructuring of the family and household came new roles for women, Fox and Fell viewed the Quaker mother as essential to developing holy conversation in her children and husband. Quaker women were responsible for the spirituality of the larger community, coming together in meetings that regulated marriage. The persecution of Quakers in North America began in 1656 when English Quaker missionaries Mary Fisher and they were considered heretics because of their insistence on individual obedience to the Inner Light. They were imprisoned and banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and their books were burned, and most of their property was confiscated. They were imprisoned in terrible conditions, then deported, in 1660, English Quaker Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony
21.
American Association of University Women
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The American Association of University Women, officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a network of 150,000 members,1,500 branches. Its headquarters are in Washington, D. C, in 1881 Marion Talbot and Ellen Swallow Richards invited 15 alumnae from 8 colleges to a meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. The Association of Collegiate Alumnae or ACA, was founded on January 14,1882. The ACA also worked to improve standards of education for women so that men and womens education was more equal in scope. At the beginning of 1884, the ACA had been meeting only in Boston, however, as more women across the country became interested in its work, the Association saw that expansion into branches was necessary to carry on its work. Washington, D. C. was the first branch to be created in 1884, and New York, Pacific, Philadelphia, in 1885, the organization took on one of its first major projects, they essentially had to justify their right to exist. A common belief held at the time that an education would harm a woman’s health. This myth was supported by Harvard-educated Boston physician Dr. Edward H. Clarke, an ACA committee led by Annie Howes created a series of questions that were sent to 1,290 ACA members,705 replies were received. After the results were tabulated, the data, not surprisingly, the report, “Health Statistics of Female College Graduates” was published in 1885 in conjunction with the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. This first research report is one of many conducted by AAUW during its history, in 1887, a fellowship program for women was established. Supporting the education of women through fellowships would continually remain a part of AAUW’s mission. Back in 1883, a group of college women had considered forming a Chicago, Illinois branch of the ACA, however. They formed the Western Association of Collegiate Alumnae with Jane M. Bancroft as its first president, WACA was broad in purpose and consisted of five committees, fine arts, outdoor occupations, domestic professions, press and journalism, and higher education of women in the West. In 1888, WACA awarded its first fellowship of $350 to Ida Street, in 1889, WACA merged with the ACA, further expanding the groups capacity. In 1919, the ACA participated in an effort led by a group of American women which ultimately raised $156,413 to purchase a gram of radium for Marie Curie for her experiments. In 1921, the ACA merged with the Southern Association of College Women to create the AAUW, during World War II, AAUW officially began raising money to assist female scholars displaced by the Nazi led occupation who were unable to continue their work. The War Relief Fund received numerous pleas for help and worked tirelessly to find teaching and other positions for women at American schools and universities
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FindLaw
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FindLaw is a business of Thomson Reuters that provides online legal information and online marketing services for law firms. FindLaw was created by Stacy Stern, Martin Roscheisen, and Tim Stanley in 1995, FindLaw. com is a free legal information website that helps consumers, small-business owners, students and legal professionals find answers to everyday legal questions and legal counsel when necessary. The site includes case law, state and federal statutes, a lawyer directory and it also includes a free legal dictionary and magazine called Writ, whose contributors argue, explain and debate legal matters of topical interest. FindLaw offers website development and Internet advertising services for legal professionals, FindLaw Home Page FindLaw Australia FindLaw UK FindLaw Canada
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People for the American Way
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People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy group in the United States. Organized as a 501 non-profit organization, PFAW was founded in 1981 by television producer Norman Lear, Lear founded the organization in 1980 to challenge the Moral Majority. Officially incorporated on September 4,1980, its co-founders included Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Time Inc. chairman, PFAW began as a project of the Tides Foundation, a donor-advised fund that directs money to politically liberal causes. Former presidents of PFAW include Tony Podesta and Ralph Neas, later, the People For the American Way Voter Alliance was launched as a political action committee. PFAW monitors what it characterizes as right-wing activities, toward this end, the organization sponsors a website called Right Wing Watch, which showcases video footage of groups and individuals who take conservative stances on social issues. In response, David Benham said, We love all people, I love Islam, Muslims, and my brother and I would never discriminate. Never have we -- never would we, PFAW has been active in battles over judicial nominations, opposing U. S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and supporting the nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor. PFAW is also active in elections, donating $339,874 to oppose Republican candidates in the 2014 election cycle. Michael Keegan is the organizations president, members of the groups board of directors include John Hall Buchanan, Jr. Alec Baldwin, Seth MacFarlane, Mary Frances Berry, Julian Bond, Bertis Downs IV, James Hormel, Dolores Huerta, Jane Lynch, Josh Sapan, Dennis Van Roekel, Howie Klein and Reg Weaver. Major donors to PFAW include George Soros Open Society Institute, the Miriam G. wallach Foundation, the Bauman Foundation, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
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Establishment Clause
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The Anti-Establishment Clause was derived from a number of precursors, including the Constitutions of Clarendon, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonial constitutions. An initial draft by John Dickinson was prepared in conjunction with his drafting the Articles of Confederation, in 1789, then-congressman James Madison prepared another draft which, following discussion and debate in the First Congress, would become incorporated into the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The Anti-Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation respecting an establishment of religion, the second half of the Anti-Establishment Clause inherently prohibits the government from preferring any one religion over another. The Constitutions of Clarendon, an 11th Century English law, had prohibited criminal defendants using religious laws to seek exemption from criminal prosecution. The 1689 English Bill of Rights secured the rights of all persons to be free from establishment of Catholic Church laws in the government of England. S, Constitutions First Amendment in its allowing exercise of religious laws to infringe the rights held by others. The statute was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and was introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in 1779 and it did not pass the General Assembly until 1786. James Madison played an important role in its passage and this was likely one reason for Jeffersons deathbed acknowledgment. S. The First Amendment is part of a group of 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution known as the Bill of Rights. The idea of adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution was proposed by George Mason five days before the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787 and his proposal was rejected by the other delegates. Later, six more states likewise recommended the addition of a Bill of Rights, when the First Federal Congress met in 1789, Madison implemented the idea by introducing 17 Amendments to the Constitution. By December 1791, ten of his Amendments were ratified by the three quarters of the states, and they became part of the US Constitution, thereafter becoming known as the Bill of Rights. The Anti--Establishment Clause addressed the concerns of members of minority faiths who did not want the government to establish a state religion for the entire nation. The Baptists in Virginia, for example, had suffered prior to the disestablishment of the Anglican church in 1786. As Virginia prepared to hold its elections to the ratifying convention in 1788. In Orange County, Virginia, two federalist candidates, James Madison and James Gordon, Jr. were running against two anti-federalists, Thomas Barbour and Charles Porter. Leland stated in the letter that, among his other concerns, in any event, Leland cast his vote for Madison. Lelands support, according to Scarberry, was key to the landslide victory of Madison and Gordon. Subsequently, under the Incorporation doctrine, the Bill of Rights has been applied to limit state
25.
Everson v. Board of Education
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Everson v. Board of Education,330 U. S.1 was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which applied the Establishment Clause in the countrys Bill of Rights to State law. This was the first Supreme Court case incorporating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as binding upon the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the decision in Everson marked a turning point in the interpretation and application of disestablishment law in the modern era. Both Justice Hugo Blacks majority opinion and Justice Wiley Rutledges dissenting opinion defined the First Amendment religious clause in terms of a wall of separation between church and state. After repealing a former ban, a New Jersey law authorized payment by local boards of the costs of transportation to. Of the private schools that benefited from this policy, 96% were parochial Catholic schools, after a loss in the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, then the states highest court, Everson appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court on purely federal constitutional grounds. Arguments were heard on November 20,1946, the 5-4 decision was handed down on February 10,1947, and was based upon the writing of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps as important as the outcome, though, was the interpretation given by the entire Court to the Establishment Clause. It reflected a broad interpretation of the Clause that was to guide the Courts decisions for decades to come, Blacks language was sweeping, The establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this, Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another, Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any organizations or groups. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between Church and State, Justice Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justice Frankfurter. Justice Rutledge wrote another dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justices Frankfurter, in his written dissent, Justice Wiley Rutledge argued that, The funds used here were raised by taxation. The Court does not dispute nor could it that their use does in fact give aid and it only concludes that this aid is not support in law. But Madison and Jefferson were concerned with aid and support in not as a legal conclusion entangled in precedents. Here parents pay money to send their children to parochial schools and this not only helps the children to get to school and the parents to send them. It aids them in a way to get the very thing which they are sent to the particular school to secure, namely
26.
McCollum v. Board of Education
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The case was an early test of the separation of church and state with respect to education. The case tested the principle of released time, where public schools set aside time for religious instruction. The Court noted that some 2,000 communities nationwide offered similar released time programs affecting 1.5 million students, the case was brought by Vashti McCollum, the mother of a student enrolled in the Champaign public school district. In 1940, interested members of various Protestant, Catholic, and this association obtained permission from the Champaign Board of Education to offer voluntary religious education classes for public school students from grades four to nine. These weekly 30- and 45-minute classes were led by clergy and lay members of the association in public school classrooms during school hours, McCollum, an atheist, objected to the religious classes, stating that her son James was ostracized for not attending them. McCollum also complained that the school districts religious education classes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the principal elements of the McCollum complaint were that, In actual practice certain Protestant groups exercised an advantage over other Protestant denominations. The school districts calling the classes voluntary was in only because school officials coerced or forced students participation. The Circuit Court of Champaign County ruled in favor of the district in January 1946. McCollum appealed the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, on March 8,1948, the Court ruled 8-1 in favor of McCollum, ruling that the classes were unconstitutional. The Supreme Courts ruling remanded the case to the Illinois high court for relief consistent with the federal ruling, the high court revisited the issue of religious instruction in Zorach v. Clauson in 1952. The 6 to 3 ruling in the case held that a New York program allowing religious education during the school day was permissible. List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 333 Cushman, public Support of Religious Education in American Constitutional Law. The Impact of a Court Decision, Aftermath of the McCollum Case, the Lord Was Not On Trial, The Inside Story of the Supreme Courts Precedent-Setting McCollum Ruling
27.
Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York
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Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York 397 U. S.664397 U. S.664 was a case before the United States Supreme Court. The Court held that grants of tax exemption to religious organizations do not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, New York law granted property tax exemptions to religious organizations for religious properties used solely for religious worship. This exemption is authorized by N. Y, under this provision, exemptions from taxation may be granted only by general laws. This exemption is implemented by N. Y, the plaintiff contended that the exemptions indirectly required him to make a contribution to religious bodies and thereby violated the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Rejecting this contention, the New York Supreme Court granted the motion for summary judgment. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals affirmed, the United States Supreme Court affirmed, in an opinion by Chief Justice Warren Burger, expressing the views of five members of the court. Justice Douglas would have held that the tax exemptions for religious organizations violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, list of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 397 Text of Walz v. Tax Commission,397 U. S.664 is available from, Findlaw Justia
28.
Lemon v. Kurtzman
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Lemon v. Kurtzman,403 U. S.602, was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The court ruled in an 8–1 decision that Pennsylvanias Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act from 1968 was unconstitutional, as in Pennsylvania, most of these funds were spent on Catholic schools. The Courts decision in this established the Lemon test, which details legislation concerning religion. It is threefold, The statute must have a legislative purpose. The principal or primary effect of the statute must not advance nor inhibit religion, the statute must not result in an excessive government entanglement with religion. Character and purpose of institution benefited, nature of aid the state provides. Resulting relationship between government and religious authority, if any of these prongs are violated, the governments action is deemed unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The act stipulated that eligible teachers must teach only courses offered in the schools, using only materials used in the public schools. Conservative Justices, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, have scrutinized the application of the Lemon test, the Lemon test was compared to a ghoul in a late night horror movie by Justice Scalia in Lambs Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District. The test was also central to Kitzmiller v. Dover, a 2005 intelligent design case in Pennsylvania. List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 403 Sherbert Test Endorsement test Lee v. Weisman Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Summers v. Adams Alley, the Constitution & Religion, Leading Supreme Court Cases on Church and State. Kritzer, Herbert M. Richards, Mark J. Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking, The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases
29.
Marsh v. Chambers
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Three days before the ratification of the First Amendment in 1791, containing the Establishment clause, the federal legislature authorized hiring a chaplain for opening sessions with prayer. The district court held that the prayer did not violate the Constitution, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that both practices violated the Constitution. Does paying a chaplain for religious services using taxpayer dollars violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, in a 6-3 decision in favor of Marsh, Chief Justice Burger wrote the opinion for the majority. The Chief Justice noted that the position of chaplain has been tied to the work of state. Three such tests may be gleaned from our cases, the case was overruled in part by Town of Greece v. Galloway. ^ Text of Marsh v. Chambers,463 U. S.783 is available from, Findlaw
30.
Mueller v. Allen
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In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld the statute. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits laws which advance the establishment of any religion, everson v. Board of Education was the first case decided by the Court to apply the Establishment Clause prohibition to non-federal legislation. Following a 1971 decision by the Supreme Court, a condition was incorporated. The law allowed state taxpayers to a tax deduction for any expenses toward their childrens tuition, textbooks. The deduction was limited to $500 per student in school and $700 per student in middle. Justice Marshall wrote the opinion in which three other justices joined. Though the tax credits were available to all parents, in practice the chief benefit went to those parents whose children attended the parochial schools. So far as the First Amendment was concerned, Marshall added, a tax credit did not differ from a grant to parents. Everson v. Board of Education Board of Education v. Allen Lemon v. Kurtzman Free Exercise Clause Endorsement test
31.
Aguilar v. Felton
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Aguilar v. Felton,473 U. S. Aguilar v. Felton was subsequently overruled by Agostini v. Felton,521 U. S.203. Religion, State and the Burger Court, young, S. M. Lemon Reconstituted, Aguilar v. Felton and Public Aid to Parochial Schools. Text of Aguilar v. Felton,473 U. S.402 is available from, permanent dead link] Findlaw Justia
32.
Agostini v. Felton
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Agostini v. Felton,521 U. S.203, is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. In this case, the Court overruled its decision in Aguilar v and this case is noteworthy in a broader sense as a sign of evolving judicial standards surrounding the First Amendment, and the changes that have occurred in modern Establishment Clause jurisprudence. This service, abbreviated as Title I, distributed federal funds to state governments and this funding was to be put towards providing remedial education services for low-income students who were at significant risk of failing to meet state academic performance standards. By law, these services were to be provided to eligible students. Further, the services offered to children attending schools were to be equitable in comparison to the services offered to children attending public school. All educational services were to be of a secular, neutral, in 1966, the Board of Education of the City of New York applied for Title I funding. In the eligible districts in New York City, 10% of schoolchildren attend private school, to prevent First Amendment complications, the Board arranged to bus private school attendees to public schools for after-school instruction. This plan failed, and another one was adopted, which failed as well, the Board then moved on to a plan whereby public school teachers would be permitted to provide instruction in the private school buildings themselves. This plan was reviewed by the Supreme Court in Aguilar v. Felton, the District Court, on remand, issued an injunction, enjoining the Board from following a Title I plan that violated the decision. After the Courts decision in Aguilar, the Board had to devise a new plan to provide Title I services without creating a conflict between Church and State. This plan involved spending over $100,000,000 in leasing property and this rule states, in part, that an exemption from a final judgment may be granted if it is found that it is, no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application. They argued that cases decided by the Supreme Court between Aguilar and 1995 had eroded the meaning of Aguilar, and that it was no longer good law, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the denial of the motion. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard arguments on April 15,1997, chief Corporation Counsel Paul Crotty argued on behalf of New York City, marking the last time that the citys chief attorney has appeared before the nations highest court. The petitioners argument for relief revolved around three primary points, the tremendous costs involved with running their Title I program in accordance with Aguilar constituted a substantial change of fact. They argued that, because costs were not expected to be so high at the start. The respondents countered by saying that the costs of implementing the program were, in fact, known when Aguilar was decided, which would mean that no change in circumstances had occurred. Prevailing agreement in the judiciary had turned against Aguilar, with a majority of Justices having expressed their opinion that Aguilar should be reversed or, at least, subsequent Establishment Clause rulings by the Supreme Court had undermined the legal basis upon which Aguilar was decided. The argument was that, if the decision had been so considerably weakened over the years, it was no longer good law
33.
Mitchell v. Helms
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Chapter 2 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 gave federal funds via state educational agencies to local educational agencies. In turn, educational materials and equipment were lent to public and private elementary and secondary schools to implement secular, neutral, in an average year, about 30% of Chapter 2 funds spent in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, were distributed to Catholic or religious private schools. Taxpayers filed suit, arguing that this violated the First Amendments Establishment Clause, lee Boothby, representing parents who opposed the aid program in Louisiana, said the issue at stake was our historic commitment that taxpayers not be required to subsidize religious schools. The Court voted 6-3 and found that the program was Constitutional, there was no majority opinion, only a plurality of 4, with 2 justices concurring in part. Mary Helms and other public school parents file suit alleging that Chapter 2, as applied in Jefferson Parish, however, after the presiding judge who made the initial ruling retired, the case was reviewed by a new judge, who reversed that decision. Thereafter, based on different precedent, the court upheld Chapter 2, in reversing, the Court of Appeals held Chapter 2 unconstitutional. The Court used the two relevant criteria of the Lemon test to make a ruling, Does the program have a secular purpose, does the program have a primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. Does the program create an excessive entanglement between government and religion, the third criterion of the Lemon test was held in Agostini v. Felton not to be relevant when considering distributing aid to religious schools. The Court ruled that the loans were acceptable because they did not represent a governmental indoctrination or advancement of religion, the loans were made in a nondiscriminatory and constitutional fashion to both secular and non-secular schools. Since the loans were suitable for religious and public schools, the government was not serving to advance religion. This decision expressly overruled Meek v. Pittenger, and Wolman v. Walter, both of those cases invalidated aid in the form of instructional materials to sectarian schools. Accordingly, the government could provide aid to religious groups as long as such aid advances some legitimate non-religious purpose and is granted in the manner to non-religious groups
34.
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris
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A divided Court upheld an Ohio school voucher plan. The public schools in many of the parts of Cleveland were deemed failures. Of the fifty six private schools that agreed to the Pilot Project Scholarship Program, the vouchers were distributed to parents according to financial need, and these parents chose where to enroll their children. Because the number of students applying to the program greatly exceeded the number of vouchers available, participating schools are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic background. They are also not allowed to advocate or foster unlawful behavior or teach hatred of any person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion. A group of Ohio taxpayers then filed an action against Susan Zelman, Simmons-Harris along with other residents of the Cleveland area argued that the government could not pay tuition for students to attend religious school. The local federal court, in addition to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of Simmons-Harris. Zelman continued this case and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. The First Amendment comes into play during this case because the taxpayers of Ohio said that this program was a violation of the Establishment Clause, the Establishment Clause is one of the two clauses in the First Amendment. Key to the decision were the requirements of neutrality and private choice. When exploring the factors of neutrality and private choice, the number of participants who chose religious schools is noted. Since the program was designed to provide no incentive for either private, secular private, or public schools. Delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist declared that the school program was not in violation of the Establishment Clause. The 5-4 ruling upheld the Cleveland school voucher program, additionally, government support for religion is deemed constitutional as long as it occurs de facto and not de jure, or does not specify or encourage religious schools. Moreover, the issue is whether the school voucher program directly encourages or inhibits religion, noting the Courts ruling in Mueller v. Allen, this issue is confronted. Parallel to Mueller v. Allen, the Court found that in reference to the Establishment Clause there are no religious advances, the vouchers are available to a general class of citizens who meet the needed criteria and are given a personal independent choice of voucher-accepting schools. As a state plan to make a better education readily available for poor students, Chief Justice Rehnquist continues to provide defense that the program encourages the true private choice of the family. Basing school vouchers strictly on the means of the student
35.
Locke v. Davey
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Between the two Religion Clauses, the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the opinion with Justices Antonin Scalia, davey enrolled in Northwest College and received a Promise Scholarship. But when he declared a major in pastoral ministries and business management/administration. Davey was given the opportunity to continue under the scholarship but without the pastoral ministries major, in 1999, the state of Washington legislature created a scholarship, the Promise Scholarship. The scholarships were for $1,125 per year and were funded through the States general fund and they were available for qualified students who enrolled for at least half time in an eligible postsecondary institution in the state of Washington, but excluded study in theology. The scholarship was available to any graduate of a Washington public or private high school, the student must be in the top 15%, receive a score of 1,200 or higher on the SAT, or score higher than a 27 on the American College Test. In addition, the familys income must be less than 135% of the median. The Court held that there was nothing inherently constitutionally suspect in the denial of funding for religious instruction. Even if there were, Washington had a state interest in not funding devotional degrees. List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 540 List of United States Supreme Court cases
36.
Stone v. Graham
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In Stone v. Graham,449 U. S. The statute required the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom in the state. While the copies of the Ten Commandments were purchased with private funding, the Court held that the Kentuckys statute that required the Ten Commandments to be posted in school classrooms was in violation of the First Amendment. To interpret the First Amendment, the Court rested on the precedent established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court concluded that because requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school rooms has no secular legislative purpose, it is unconstitutional. The Court approached the case through the lens created in Lemon v. Kurtzman and they agreed that if Kentuckys statute broke any of the three guidelines outlined in the Lemon test, the statute would be in violation of the Establishment Clause. The Court concluded that even though The Commandments were paid for by a private institution, the mere posting of the copies under the auspices of the legislature provides the official support of the State. Government that the Establishment Clause prohibits, because it endorsed religion and had no secular purpose, the Court concluded that the Kentucky statute was unconstitutional. Justice Rehnquist argued in his dissent that the statute did not violate the First Amendment because there was a secular purpose to the Ten Commandments posting. Rehnquist argued that the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of legal codes of the Western World. Rehnquists dissent also argued that relation to religion does not automatically cause it to respect an establishment of religion. Justice Rehnquist agreed with the proposed by the majority opinion. Rehnquist believed that just because the secular purpose may overlap with what some may see as a religious objective does not render it unconstitutional. The Court argued that since the Commandments are a sacred text and are not taught in the context of history classes, Rehnquist argued that the Commandments are a document that has had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western World. Stone v. Graham was one of the first Supreme Court cases to condemn a passive religious object for its unconstitutionality, before Stone, rulings had been made on government endorsed prayers and government subsidized religious activity, but not on the mere presence of religious objects. For this reason, Stone v. Graham served as a precedent in Lynch v. Donnelly
37.
Lynch v. Donnelly
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Lynch v. Donnelly,465 U. S.668, was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the legality of Christmas decorations on town property. The crèche had been a part of the display since at least 1943, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the district courts ruling. The city then petitioned to the U. S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court reversed previous rulings in a vote of 5–4, ruling that the display was not an effort to advocate a particular religious message and had legitimate secular purposes. Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justices White, Powell, Rehnquist, the Court held that the crèche did not violate the Establishment Clause based on the test created in Lemon v. Kurtzman. They also stated that the Constitution affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance of all religions, the Court ruled that the crèche has a legitimate secular purpose within a larger holiday display to celebrate the season and the origins of Christmas which has long been a part of Western culture. The Federal Government has long recognized—indeed it has subsidized—holidays with religious significance, the court compared the crèche to the display of religious paintings in government funded museums. In addition, the crèche requires only minimal expenses for assembly, Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. One is excessive entanglement with religious institutions. The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion and this is sometimes referred to as the Endorsement Test. Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens dissented, the dissenting opinion argued that the case did not pass the Lemon test. Even if other religious groups are allowed to include competing efforts to gain or maintain the support of government may occasio considerable civil strife. The religious crèche is also placed in a location within the display. The dissenting opinion also mentions that it cannot be compared to a display in a museum because it is not solely being considered as a piece of art. The government recognition of Christmas previously has only been to recognize the secular parts of Christmas and it was precisely this sort of chauvinism that the Establishment Clause was intended forever to prohibit. County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union Endorsement test Dennis LYNCH, petitioners v. Daniel DONNELLY et al. Gordon, Glenn S. Lynch v. Donnelly, Breaking Down the Barriers to Religious Displays, Lynch v. Donnelly, Has the Lemon Test Soured. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, text of Lynch v. Donnelly,465 U. S.668 is available from, Findlaw Justia Cornell LII OpenJurist United States Supreme Court Opinions from Volume 465
38.
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union
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McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky,545 U. S.844, was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 2,2005. The Supreme Court ruled on June 27,2005, in a 5–4 decision, the same day, the Court handed down another 5–4 decision in Van Orden v. Perry with the opposite outcome. The swing vote in the cases was Justice Stephen Breyer. After changing counsel, the Counties revised the exhibits again, the new posting, entitled The Foundations of American Law and Government Display, consisted of nine framed documents of equal size. In addition to the Commandments, the counties added historical documents containing religious references as their sole common element, the Sixth Circuit saw no integration because of a lack of a demonstrated analytical or historical connection between the Commandments and the other documents. Justice David Souter wrote the opinion of the Court, next, the Court noted that the Lemon Tests purpose prong was rarely dispositive. Nonetheless, it emphasized that that prong serves an important function, indeed, anytime the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion, or to favor one religion over another, that advancement violates the Establishment Clause. Although the counties asked the Court to overrule the Lemon Test and, necessarily, the inquiry into governmental purpose, the Court noted that, in several areas of the law, an inquiry into the governments purpose is an important endeavor. The Court also stated that it was confident in the inquiry into purpose, because such inquiries had not yielded a finding of a religious purpose dominant every time a case is filed. As to an issue, whether the Court should consider the evolutionary purpose or the most recent purpose. Justice OConnor expressed her own views of the controversy in a concurring opinion, but we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment. Nor can we accept the theory that Americans who do not accept the Commandments validity are outside the First Amendments protections, there is no list of approved and disapproved beliefs appended to the First Amendment–and the Amendments broad terms do not admit of such a cramped reading. It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now and they may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home. They surely could not have predicted new religions, some of them born in this country, but they did know that line-drawing between religions is an enterprise that, once begun, has no logical stopping point. The Religion Clauses, as a result, protect adherents of all religions and that is indeed a valid principle where public aid or assistance to religion is concerned. Or where the exercise of religion is at issue. But it necessarily applies in a limited sense to public acknowledgment of the Creator. If religion in the forum had to be entirely nondenominational
39.
Van Orden v. Perry
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Texas case was argued by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. An amicus curiae was presented on behalf of the respondents by then-Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Supreme Court ruled on June 27,2005, by a vote of 5 to 4, that the display was constitutional. The Court chose not to employ the popular Lemon test in its analysis, instead, the Court looked to the nature of the monument and. Chief Justice William Rehnquist delivered the plurality opinion of the Court, Justice Stephen Breyer concurred in the judgment, the similar case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky was handed down the same day with the opposite result. The swing vote in both cases was Breyer, the monument challenged was 6-feet high and 3-feet wide was placed in 1961. It was donated to the State of Texas by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, deMille, who had directed the film The Ten Commandments. The State accepted the monument and selected a site for it based on the recommendation of the agency responsible for maintaining the Capitol grounds. The donating organization paid for its erection, two state legislators presided over the dedication of the monument. The monument was erected on the Capitol grounds, behind the capitol building, the surrounding 22 acres contained 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating the people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity. The plurality opinion stated that the monument was constitutional, as it represented historical value, the primary content is the text of the Ten Commandments. An eagle grasping the American flag, an eye inside of a pyramid, below the text are two Stars of David and the superimposed Greek letters Chi and Rho, which represent Christ. The bottom of the monument bears the inscription PRESENTED TO THE PEOPLE AND YOUTH OF TEXAS BY THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF EAGLES OF TEXAS1961. Below the above matter, and the title the Ten Commandments, a native Texan, Van Orden passed by the monument frequently when he would go to the Texas Supreme Court building to use its law library. However, in Van Orden v. Perry, Breyer submitted a separate from that of the Court. As a result, the Van Orden case was decided by a plurality, in opening his discussion of reasoning Breyer states, The case before us is a borderline case. It concerns a large monument bearing the text of the Ten Commandments located on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol. On the one hand, the Commandments text undeniably has a message, invoking, indeed emphasizing. On the other hand, focusing on the text of the Commandments alone cannot conclusively resolve this case, rather, to determine the message that the text here conveys, we must examine how the text is used
