Last Night
Last Night: The Pledge of Allegiance
Last night, I read some more of Noah Feldman's Scorpions, a history book about the FDR-era Supreme Court.
Yesterday, I noted my discovery that the concept of "original intent," currently the trendy guiding principle of the right-leaning Roberts court which decided in Citizens United that corporations are people, was introduced by liberal Justice Hugo Black when, ironically, he decided that corporations didn't have 14th Amendment rights precisely because the constitution literally only gave rights to people.
And now last night's turn-everything-upside-down revelation: The whole debate about whether school kids have to say the Pledge of Allegiance, now kind of standard culture war issue with the conservative right being pro-pledge and liberals being unpatriotic hippies, originally came to the court because religious conservatives refused to say the pledge. They didn't want to place the the state above God.
The 1940 case starring conservatives against the pledge is Minersville School District vs. Gobitis.
Yesterday, I noted my discovery that the concept of "original intent," currently the trendy guiding principle of the right-leaning Roberts court which decided in Citizens United that corporations are people, was introduced by liberal Justice Hugo Black when, ironically, he decided that corporations didn't have 14th Amendment rights precisely because the constitution literally only gave rights to people.
And now last night's turn-everything-upside-down revelation: The whole debate about whether school kids have to say the Pledge of Allegiance, now kind of standard culture war issue with the conservative right being pro-pledge and liberals being unpatriotic hippies, originally came to the court because religious conservatives refused to say the pledge. They didn't want to place the the state above God.
The 1940 case starring conservatives against the pledge is Minersville School District vs. Gobitis.
