At the end of the May blog, I told you that I wasn’t sleeping well because of my concerns about The Supreme Court. Actually, I was having nightmares. Now I’m reliving Thomas Jefferson’s criticism of Chief Justice John Marshall when he said: “How dexterously he can reconcile law to his personal biases.”
No Court is perfect. SCOTUS authored the Dred Scott decision finding six to two that black persons were personal property and adding gratuitously, that they could never become citizens. Then there’s Plessy v Ferguson case which proclaimed the doctrine of “Separate, but Equal”, which was the basis of segregation.
What about the Korematsu case that authorized the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II? There’s a long list of unhappy rulings. Try Citizens United.
The latest decisions concern religion and the First Amendment. In Carson v. Makin in the guise of protecting the rights of religions the Court found that Maine had to give federal funds to religious schools even though they taught the biblical world view and the schools were only for “Christians .” They found that American Christians would otherwise suffer discrimination. No mention was made about the atheist or agnostic or Muslim or Jewish Americans whose tax money was being used to promote Christian doctrinal teaching. What happened to the First Amendment‘s prohibition of preferential treatment?
Then there’s the very recent Kennedy v Bremerton School District case. The assistant football coach was conducting Christian prayer on the 50 yard line after the game and the players were invited to attend. They did, especially if they wanted playing time, which the coach controlled. Even though the prayer session was created by the coach, not the students, SCOTUS found it to be Kennedy‘s religious right. I remember hearing Christian prayers at the start of football games, but not lately. What about a Christian pageant as the half time show ? You could always leave the stadium or turn off your TV if you didn’t like it.
I thought that we had a separation of church and state. Presidents Kennedy and Biden seem to be able to have kept their religious beliefs quite separate from their political decisions. The Court might consider following their example. ~ Lewis