Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigD
A point of SCOTUS record: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) explicitly overturned Minersville v. Gobitis (1940).
A side note: It’s interesting (at least to those who find the social and legal history of the pledge interesting) that Minersville v. Gobitis explicitly states that it applies to the pledge with the line "and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" vs. “and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". Although not made US public law until 1954, the “under God” version of the pledge is commonly said to have first appeared in 1948 ( source). As the only variant of that line as of the SCOTUS’s 1940 decision was an old published version which omitted the word “to”, I’m led to wonder if the “under God” addition was know to the Court 8 years before it’s commonly believed to have appeared. |
Thanks Craig. I really blew that one. I'm used to using libraries to do legal research. I forgot that the internet is a great source of the eternal breathless discovery of what has long since passed. It can't be trusted. I'm not sure how to handle it. When I write about the law, I like to get it right. (Come to think of it, I like to get other stuff right too.)
If anybody can help me find trustworthy, updated legal sources, maybe that could be addressed elsewhere. Until then, I'll leave discussions of the law to people who know what they're doing and people who don't know they don't know what they're doing. I can't yet join the former group and I think I just graduated from the latter group.
--lemit
