Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
– can be interpreted the way it has been? For instance. The first part says, to me, that the Government can’t establish a state run church and they can’t tell me I can or can’t pray or where to pray or where not to pray.
Then the Supreme Court, in their infinite wisdom, has ruled that the free speech part says, among other things, that a woman can have an abortion. (I think that is right).
I am not judging one way or the other on the examples I made, but just how in the Hell did they interpret it this way? Did I miss something along the way or am I missing one or two brain cells?
in a nutshell.
There are a lot more, if you search Roe vs Wade.
Go look. Then ask about the parts you don’t understand. http://members.aol.com/abtrbng/roeins.htm
I don’t claim to understand the fine points myself, but it is the law.
Peace,
mangeorge
The Roe v. Wade decision is based upon the constitutional guarantee to privacy found in the 4th amendment, not the right to free speech found in the 1st amendment. Hope that helps.
Oh Christ, spelling alert. It has to do with the penumbra theory, established in Griswold vs. Connecticut, which established that it was an unconstitutional breach of privacy for states to ban birth control for married couples. Technically, the word “privacy” never appears in the constitution. The court ruled that were, however, shadows (penumbras) of privacy in lots of places in the constitution. These included the first amendment (right of free association), the third amendment (right to be secure in one’s home against quartering of soldiers), the fourth (search and seizure, I think), as well as a few others. This doctrine was then applied to Roe v. Wade (correctly, I think).
Yeah, 14th amendment. Yeah. Anyway, as to the first, “the Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”
Now, ‘establishment’ does not mean, there, that the Congress shall not establish a religion. Establishment is a noun, here, not a verb. ‘Establishment of religion’ means a church, whether a single church (building and congregation) or a whole sect (like the baptists, or the Buddhists). Respecting doesn’t mean show respect for, but ‘with regards to’. So, “Congress shall pass no law with regards to a religious sect”.
Meaning that Congress can not favor one religious group over another.
Triskadecamus and VarlosZ are both right regarding the amendments that are the sources of the right of privacy. The right of privacy derives from the “penumbra” distributed in several the first 10 amendments. The 14th amendment makes (most of) the first 10 amendments applicable to state goverments, not just the federal goverment. Before the 14th amendment, states were not bound by the 10 amendments (only the federal government was bound; state laws restricitng freedon of speech, for example, were not unconstitutional before the 14th amendment – although most states had and have protections in their state constitutions).
As to the comment regarding the establishment clause, that the word “establishment” refers to a physical church building rather than the abstract concept of religion – well, I just don’t buy it. The founding fathers disdained organized religion (being deists) and clearly wanted to keep religion and government seperate.
All this from a Gov’t that “protects” public nudity under “Freedom of speech”, yet has trouble determining what “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed” means (No jokes about “armed bears”, please).
Lol: Spoofe Bo Diddly. Unfortunately, public nudity is not protected by the constitution, as I think it should be. Under the current supreme court, very little in the way of private rights are protected, e.g. no protections of consentual homo- or hetero- sexual sex acts (federal or state governments may criminalize fellatio between non-married individuals).
Conservative constitutional scholars decry the liberal way of interpreting the constitution (liberals find stuff that is not literally there but is implicit in the spirit of the document). Liberals think conservatives are looking at the constitution all wrong, as if the constitution were a statute that would have to be literally construed. Liberals say the constitution is a living breathing document that has to be interpreted.
I think the liberal way is right because the conservative way is potentially consistent with fascism. Under a conservative interpretation of the constitution, it is perfectly constitutional for a state to criminalize musical instruments. “Speech” in the original intent of the framers applied to political speech, not expression in general. Nevertheless, I don’t think a civilized modern society could ever ban musical instruments, so I am all for an expanded view of the constitution that protects all forms of expression and privacy rights, which are really the same thing.
As to the establishment clause: I think this is the single worst written sentence in the history of mankind. Who knows what the framers intended. And who really cares anyway. When the constitution was written, all we had were crappy muskets that took five minutes to load – hardly the thing that could be used in a drive-by shooting. The answer is: the framers did not really have any intent at all, since they were not talking about arms as we know them. “Right to bear arms” = Let everyone have a musket.
Right on Tzel! Most of the framers hated organized religion. They were deists. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine called the bible a piece of garbage. The last thing they wanted was for religion to be imposed on any individual in any way by the state.
Why didn’t the framer’s talk about religion in the schools, etc., etc. Simply because back then there were few if any state schools. They were voluntary. The state in general had little to do with the private life of the citizen-- the government maintained an army and delivered the mail. So at that time the mere prohibition against “establishement of a church” was sufficient to keep religion totally out of our faces. Today, they would have written the clause slightly differently to make it clear that religion should not be favored over irreligion or atheism. This was their intent when they worte the clause, and fortunately the Supreme Court has seen fit to recognize that fact.
The framers didn’t care what weapons Americans would be using. Right to bear arms = Right to defend yourself, mainly from the government (in the founders’ eyes). That is what they meant. They knew that an armed populace does not suffer a tyrant to live. They also knew that the first action of a tyrant is to disarm the populace. Hence the Second Amendment.