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The Right To Religion-Based Exemptions In Early America: The Case Of Conscientious Objectors To Conscription, Ellis M. West
The Right To Religion-Based Exemptions In Early America: The Case Of Conscientious Objectors To Conscription, Ellis M. West
Political Science Faculty Publications
One of the more controversial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in recent years was its decision in the case of Employment Division, Oregon v. Smith, which raised the basic issue of whether the free exercise clause of the First Amendment guarantees a right to religion-based exemptions, i.e., whether it gives persons and groups a prima facie right to be exempt from having to obey valid laws when they have religious reasons for noncompliance. More specifically, in Smith, two Native Americans claimed that their prosecution for using an illegal drug, peyote, was precluded by the free exercise …
Another "Solemn Public Lie", Frederick Bernays Wiener
Another "Solemn Public Lie", Frederick Bernays Wiener
University of Richmond Law Review
When Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and the founder of religious toleration in what was to become the United States of America, examined the charter that King James I had given the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, he found in that document two significant misstatements. Williams first pointed out the falsity of the recital wherein the King "blessed God that he was the first Christian Prince that had discovered this land."' He then denounced the royal land grant to the Massachusetts Bay Company, because that land belonged, not to the King, but to …