AMERICA'S CHRISTIAN HERITAGE HOMEPAGE
Week 3 - How we got off Track !
33. In Abington v. Schempp (1963), the case centered around a Pennsylvania law that said:
"...at least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read, without comment, at the opening of each
public school day. Any child shall be excused from such Bible reading, or attending such Bible
reading, upon written request of his parent or guardian."
34. The Court held that public schools may not require that passages from the Bible be read or that
the Lord's Prayer be recited in public schools at the beginning of the school day, even if students
were excused from participation with a note from their parents.
35. Former President Gerald Ford drafted a writ of impeachment against the extremely liberal Justice
William O. Douglas. Ford made a speech charging Douglas with criminal activities and with
promoting rebellion in his writings. Commenting on that bold step, Ford said, �An impeachable
offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment
in history.� He added that, when a justice is impeached, �conviction results from whatever offense
or offenses two-thirds of the other body [meaning the Senate] considers to be sufficiently serious to
require removal of the accused from office.� That idea was not new with Ford; it comes straight
from the Constitution.
36. Douglas had an integrated judicial philosophy based on the belief that the Bill of Rights existed
"to keep government off the backs of the people"�even in times of severe crisis. Douglas and
Hugo Black stood alone during the McCarthy era in dissenting from the Court's decisions sustaining
the loyalty-security measures. Unlike Black, however, Douglas's view of appropriate dissent was
not narrow, and he easily accommodated the novel tactics of civil rights and antiwar activists to
his First Amendment positions. His reputation as an uncompromising defender of the individual rests
on his First Amendment opinions, especially his classic dissents in the Smith Act convictions of the
Communist party leaders (Dennis et al. v. United States, 1951) and a jailhouse sit-in case (Adderly
v. Florida, 1966).
37. Douglas looked upon work as having a constitutional dimension, believing it was essential for a
person's fulfillment. Like other New Dealers, he believed that governments had to exert control
over the economy; yet he distrusted bureaucracies, whether corporate or governmental, saying
they would create "a nation of clerks." For Douglas, all individuals, regardless of race, religion, or
status, were entitled to all the rights that the privileged, by virtue of their money, traditionally
enjoyed, a view that eventually paved the way for the Court's controversial 1973 abortion decision,
Roe v. Wade.
38. Douglas was a complex, driven man who changed significantly over the years. Until he was fifty,
he was so politically attuned that Franklin D. Roosevelt made him the youngest Supreme Court
nominee in over a century and he was a serious candidate for the presidency. Yet by the time he
was seventy, he had become known for his injudiciousness and disdain for convention. He was
a man with few friends (he publicly called his generation "bankrupt") and four wives (the last two
in their early twenties)
39. Lemon v. Kurtzman, Earley v. DiCenso and Robinson v. DiCenso � 1971 - The Lemon case was
three separate cases pertaining to public support of religious schools in Pennsylvania and Rhode
Island. A federal court had upheld a Pennsylvania law that provided partial payment of private
school teacher salaries as well as textbook expenditures. A separate court had overturned a similar
Rhode Island law. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled both laws unconstitutional, but more
importantly, the Court also set out a test for future analysis of such cases.
40. Now known as the Lemon test, it outlined three conditions that a law must meet in order to
remain compliant with the Establishment Clause. Chief Justice Burger wrote for the Court:
"First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary
effect must be one that neither advances or inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster
an excessive government Entanglement with religion."
41. Roe v. Wade was a lawsuit in which a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling recognized abortion as a
constitutional right, over-turning individual states' laws against abortion, becoming one of the
most famous U.S. Supreme Court cases and one of its landmark decisions. A Canadian Supreme
Court case titled Morgentaler et. al. v. Her Majesty The Queen would decide the same issue there
some 15 years later.
42. The case originated in Texas in March 1970: A pregnant woman, the pseudonymous "Jane Roe,"
headed a class action lawsuit against the state of Texas's anti-abortion laws, claiming that the laws
were unconstitutionally vague and abridged her rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Dallas district attorney Henry Wade was
the defendant in the case.