ABERRATIONS TO BE REPAIRED:

The Dangers of Accommodation of Religion Based on Religious Status, As Opposed to Religiously Motivated Practice, And the Duty of Religious Individuals to Obey the Law (MARCI HAMILTON, Apr. 05, 2007, FindLaw)

Even now, decades later, we are still reaping the harvest from the Supreme Court's unfortunate 1972 decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder, which held that the Free Exercise Clause required that the Amish be permitted to avoid Wisconsin's neutral, generally applicable compulsory education law so that their children could be educated in farming. That case is the odd duck in First Amendment law, in that it held that a religious group could overcome the force of law simply by reason of asserting its religious beliefs. Yet some cling to it as if it were typical of the Supreme Court's view of the matter.

In fact, most other Supreme Court precedents, in sharp contrast, tend to follow the contrary principle espoused in the Court's 1971 decision in Gillette v. United States, and reiterated in its 1990 decision in Employment Div. v. Smith. Gillette said, and Smith quoted Gillette to the effect that, the Court's "cases do not at their farthest reach support the proposition that a stance of conscientious opposition relieves an objector from any colliding duty fixed by a democratic government."

That their principles were only discovered in the Constitution in the 60s and 70s is fatal to the Left.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 9, 2007 12:00 AM