NAME ONE USEFUL THING done by Russell, Rutherford, F.Franz

by Terry 74 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Band on the Run

  I repeatedly tell you that they number in the hundreds if not the thousands. Symposia are held to discuss the impact. The law review articles are mind boggling in number. Many books are written on the topic. The problem is too much data, not the paucity of it. None of these writers are JW, to my knowledge. It is huge. Every time I sit and hear a First Amendment discussion, they are mentioned. These cases were in a cluster. Every legal treatise on const' law address them in detail. Every religious and political group were the beneficiaries. Freedom in general was the beneficiary.

  Personally, I believe the Witnesses were a repeat plaintiff at a crucial time. If they did not bring suit, another organization would have. Covington decided to pursue these cases aggressively. My plan to interview him was to see if I could determine the politics within the WTS of accepting amicus help from the ACLU. Covington would need the help. Technically, the ACLU could file without the Witnesses permission. The coordination interested me. The ACLU was ever interested. If I recall correctly, there were amicus briefs against the Witnesses, too. These organizations presence showed that JWs were not the only ones interested in the results. When a prof riffs about the JW cases, admiration for Witnesses as Witnesses is never uttered. It is more those troublesome people invading your privacy at home as a joke managed to be important actors for freedom. Who would guess?

  Pay me $300/hour and I will do the research despite the unpleasantness. Googling will show the most important ones. You don't to read the entire articles. One need only skim the four or five sentences summarize each case relying on the Witness cases. I have access to four legal databases. FindLaw is available to normal people. If I recall, W.Va. v. Barnette is the huge one. Search "Barnette" within Findlaw's database for federal cases. A professional legal database would deliver thousands of hits. Again, within the results, don't read the entire case unless you are deeply interested. There is always a succint summary to inform lawyers what the case is about so the entire case need not be read.

  Nastiness does not lead to someone performing research. Maybe you sincerely believe I have not answered. Let the record show what I did answer. Truly, I was going to do the research and make the results accessible. I use this forum casually. Since I have been here for months, I thought it could be my contribution to understanding and a nice thread for the archives.
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  james_woods

  Covington decided to pursue these cases aggressively. My plan to interview him was to see if I could determine the politics within the WTS of accepting amicus help from the ACLU. Covington would need the help.

  You knew Covington has been dead for quite some years, right?

  Look - (again, no offense meant) - but, if these SC decisions were such landmarks, why can't somebody just name one and describe what it says in simple laymans language?

  My feeling is that these SC cases by the JWs was (like OP Terry said) simply hubris on the part of the WTBTS to stir the pot for their peculiar anti-government philosophy. I don't think that they were actually "USEFUL" in a normal sense of the word. I agree that they may be of interest to legal scholars as a sort of curiosity - but USEFUL? I doubt it.

  Pay me $300/hour and I will do the research despite the unpleasantness.

  Maybe you should ask for more considering the unpleasantness. Shall I start a thread to solicit contributions? (just kidding)
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  Terry

  
  
  West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
  
  319 U.S. 624 (1943)
  
  

  Facts of the Case: As part of instituting a required curriculum teaching American values, the state of West Virginia forced students and teachers to participate in saluting the flag. Failure to comply with this resulted in expulsion and the student was considered illegally absent until readmitted. A group of Jehovah's Witnesses refused to salute the flag because it represented a graven image that was not to be recognized. Decision: In an 8-1 decision, the Court ruled that the school district violated the rights of students by forcing them to salute the American flag. Majority Opinion: (Justice Jackson) The refusal of the students to say the pledge did not infringe on the rights of other students. The flag salute required students to declare a belief that was contrary to their faiths. The state did not claim that a clear and present danger would be created if the students remained passive during the pledge. Unlike the decision in Gobitis, this Court does not believe that allowing an individual's rights to be supported over government authority is a sign of a weak government. "Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities." Finally, compulsion is not a legitimate means for creating national unity. Significance: This decision directly reversed the Court's earlier decision in Gobitis. In this case, the Court saw the forced salute as compelling the students to assert a belief contrary to their faiths. The minimal harm created by lack of compliance is not great enough to dismiss the rights of the students to exercise their religions Copyright © The Religious Freedom Page.
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  JeffT

  They gave me the idea that has turned into two (unpublished) novels about the dangers of apocalyptic cults.
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  Terry

  Dissenting opinion

  Justice Felix Frankfurter

  Three years earlier seven justices had followed Frankfurter’s reasoning and joined his majority opinion in Gobitis. In Barnette however, only Frankfurter filed a written dissent, while Justices Owen Roberts and Stanley Reed dissented in silence.

  Frankfurter said that the court was overstepping its bounds in striking down the West Virginia law. He said, too, that freedom of religion did not allow individuals to break laws simply because of religious conscience. Frankfurter argued that, "Otherwise each individual could set up his own censor against obedience to laws conscientiously deemed for the public good by those whose business it is to make laws."

  Frankfurter’s response to Jackson’s systematic destruction of his Gobitis decision was one of anger, and Justices Roberts and Murphy tried to get him to revise his opinion, arguing that the first two lines were “much too personal”. However, Frankfurter ignored the advice of his fellow justices, taking the overruling of his Gobitis decision as a personal affront and insisting on speaking his mind.

  Frankfurter began with a reference to his Jewish roots: “One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.” This was the passage Justices Roberts and Frank Murphy felt was out of place. Frankfurter, however, insisted that the passage was necessary since he claimed he was “literally flooded with letters” following the Court’s decision in Gobitis that said he should be more sensitive to the protection of minorities due to his Jewish heritage. Frankfurter's dissent continued, “Were my purely personal attitudes relevant I should wholeheartedly associate myself with the generally libertarian views in the Court’s opinion . . . But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.”

  Having responded to his critics and the Court’s reversal on a personal level, he now responded on a judicial one, with the remainder of his opinion focusing on judicial restraint. “As a member of this Court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution.... It can never be emphasized too much that one’s own opinion about the wisdom or evil of a law should be excluded altogether when one is doing one’s duty on the bench.”

  Frankfurter continued, arguing that if the Court is frequently striking down laws it is circumventing the democratic process, since the Court cannot work to reach a compromise. It either strikes down a law or lets it stand; it cannot simply modify or qualify a law as a legislature can.

  Finally Frankfurter rejected Justice Stone’s rational basis test that Stone laid out in United States v. Carolene Products Co.. Instead Frankfurter focused on his belief that there were no provisions within the constitution that occupied a “preferred position” over others.
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  Terry

  Just you wait until Muslim kids start exercising their Sharia Law consciences in schools! Frankfurter's words will suddenly seem prudent. The fact that JW's at least had the veneer of "christian conscience" made it an easier sell.
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  james_woods

  Just you wait until Muslim kids start exercising their Sharia Law consciences in schools! Frankfurter's words will suddenly seem prudent. The fact that JW's at least had the veneer of "christian conscience" made it an easier sell.

  I don't know, Terry - with todays liberal/progressive acceptance of Sharia as an alternative to normal U.S. law, perhaps not much protest will be made. Already some schools have been cowed into providing special prayer rooms, prayer times, and foot baths for Sharia students. Which is why I question that any of the JW Supreme Court rulings could be called "USEFUL" in a positive, or practical sense of the word. In a perverse way, you could say that a gun is "USEFUL" to an armed robber.
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  Band on the Run

  I was in college in the late 1960s. My mom said Covington might be around still. I decided my mental health was more important than a JW thesis. Besides, with my JW baggage, I could not be neutral. I never do academic work that pushes button. Grades were important to me.

  My father was Covington's drinking partner. There was serious trouble between Knorr and Covington. Covington was getting credit Knorr was used to claiming. It happened with another popular lawyer. My father heard Bethel rumors that Covington had been disfellowshipped. He searched around and could not neither confirm the rumors or determine the grounds. Consequently, they acknowledged each other's presence but my father declined to talk to him.

  It would have been much better for my plans if Covington were disfellowshipped.

  If there are two scenarios, many people always jump for the most demeaning one.

  Hey, it is anyone's right to not believe the Witness cases helped anyone. Pointing out that such a view is against all legal views, views of people who don't care about Witnesses, is not denying a right.
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  james_woods

  It would have been much better for my plans if Covington were disfellowshipped.

  He was - ostensibly for drunkenness. Many say it was really because he took the case of Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali instead of continuing to defend witnesses on the draft issue. My friends had a deep issue with his professional legal integrity, but swallowed it whole because of knuckling under to the society. I can honestly tell you that I met him in the late 60s (I was facing the draft issue myself) and I thought he was a pathetic old blowhard drunk. I used my family attorney and got off on deferment until Nixon ended the draft.

  Hey, it is anyone's right to not believe the Witness cases helped anyone. Pointing out that such a view is against all legal views, views of people who don't care about Witnesses, is not denying a right.

  Hey - I never said they did not "help" anyone. I just said that nothing they did were USEFUL THINGS. As posted before, the gun could be said to help the bank robber do his deed.
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  designs

  james-

  I agree, the GB let us hang during the Vietnam War..