How the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />U.S. Supreme Court and Her Justices Are Pushing Us Toward Becoming One Nation Under Man<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
 
1).  In 1881, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his book The Common Law, attacks the moral law when he wrote, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral political theories…have a good deal more to do than the syllogism [legal reasoning process] in determining the rules by which men should be governed."[1]
 
2).  In 1907, Charles Evan Hughes, who would later become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court said, "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is."[2]
 
3).  In 1932, Benjamin Cardozo was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court: Cardozo proclaimed his belief in legal positivism when he said, "I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life."[3] Cardozo saw little purpose for the person of faith that believed in the moral law as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution and founding documents when he said, "If there is any law which is back of the sovereignty of the state, and superior thereto, it is not law in such a sense as to concern the judge or lawyer, however much it concerns the statesman or the moralist."[4]
 
4).  1947, Everson v. Board of Education: The U.S Supreme court took the Fourteenth Amendment which addressed specific state powers and hooked it to the First Amendment. With this decision the Court was taking off the handcuffs that had restrained and limited the scope of the Federal government's power and placed them onto the states. Now the federal courts were empowered to decide when and what rights the states could practice. So severe was the impact of this ruling that Supreme Court Justice Williams Douglas referred to the 1947 decision as creating a "revolution". It was a silent revolution that most America's are unaware of even to this day despite the freedoms that were stolen from them and their states by an ever growing and intruding federal government.
 
The U.S. Supreme Court deliberately took the separation phrase from Jefferson's letter out of context, changed the meaning of his words, and began to propagate a lie to the American people. This case was the first time the Court used Jefferson's letter completely divorced from its context and original meaning.  
 
5).  1948, McCollum v. Board of Education: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Illinois could not offer voluntary or elective religious courses to its students despite the fact that parents had picked these courses and signed printed cards that verified that fact the parents wanted their children to take these weekly, voluntary, elective, religious courses. This ruling set national policy for all the nation's public schools. 
 
6).  1958, Trop v. Dulles: Chief Justice Warren declared the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution could not have the same meaning as it did at the time it was written. Chief Justice Warren stated, "the Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that marks the progress of a maturing society." In other words, moral and standards change and evolve over time as does the meaning of the constitution. Applying Darwinian evolution to the law is known as legal positivism.
 
7).  1961, Torcaso v. Watkins: In a footnote to this decision, Justice Hugo L. Black wrote, "Among religious in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.[5]" Despite this finding, judges  do not apply the "separation of church and state" standard to Secular Humanism which is the primary worldview taught in America's public schools via government funding.
 
8).  1962, Engel v. Vitale: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional and a violation of the "separation of church and state" for the students of New York Schools to recite a long standing prayer. This was the first time the Court ruled on a decision using zero precedent by not citing one preceding legal case to substantiate their Constitutional justification for such a ruling.  In this case the Court changed the word "church" to mean  "a religious activity in public." This decision made corporate, voluntary student prayer in America's public schools illegal through the nation.
 
9).  1963, School District of Abington Township v. Schempp: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Pennsylvania public school children can not be involved in corporate, voluntarily, reading of the Bible at school. This decision set national policy, as U.S. Supreme Court rulings do, for all the nation's public schools.
 
10).  1968, Epperson v. Arkansas: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arkansas can not require that creationism be taught in the public schools. This ruling set national policy for all the nation's public schools. 
 
11).  1971, Lemon v. Kurtzman: This U.S. Supreme Court ruling established what became known as the "Lemon Test" related to church and state interaction. The Lemon Test required that state policy have no religious purpose. In other words, the state's religious policy can only have a secular purpose. In addition, the Lemon test required that no state policy create a situation where one religion would have advantage over another or be promoted over nonreligious beliefs. Interestingly enough, despite the 1961 footnote in Torcaso v. Watkins that Secular Humanism was a religion, the Lemon test has not been applied to Secular Humanism which enjoys an advantage over the Christian worldview in America's schools and has been implemented for religious purposes.
 
12).  1973, Roe v. Wade: This U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed for abortion on demand.
 
13).  1980, Stone v. Graham: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky can not post the Ten Commandments in their public school classrooms. The Court ruled, "If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, mediate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments."[6] This ruling set national policy for all the nation's public schools. 
 
14).  1984, Lynch v. Donnelly: In writing her opinion in this case Justice Sandra Day O'Connor created what has become known as the "endorsement test". The endorsement test is used to determine whether or not a government policy is endorsing a religion.
 
15).  1987, Edwards v. Aguillard: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana could not require that evolution and creation both be taught side by side. This ruling set national policy for all the nation's public schools.
 
16). 1992, Lee v. Wiseman: Through this decision the U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for a pastor, priest or member of the clergy to offer an invocation or benediction at a public school graduation ceremony. Writing in this decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy created what has become known as the "coercion test". The coercion test prohibits the minority from being coerced by the majority to participate in a religious activity such as a prayer, the reading of scripture or reciting of religious speech in a public setting. Atheist, Michael Newdow used the "coercion test" as the foundation of his case in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to make it illegal for public school children to recite the pledge of allegiance if it includes the phrase, "one nation under God."
 
17).  1992, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey: The U.S. Supreme Court In writing the majority opinion Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Justice Souter and Justice Kennedy wrote, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe and the mystery of human life."[7]Author and family advocate James Dobson wrote that "with those words, the Court discarded its historic reliance on 'a law beyond the law,' or a transcendent standard."[8] Author and attorney Chuck Colson wrote that, "the mystery passage could mean absolutely anything to a future court, including the right to marry your toaster if you wish."[9]
 
18).  1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court: While serving as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Ginsburg wrote a paper entitled, "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code" which was prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in April 1977 in which is recommended lowering the age of consent for sexual acts be lowered to age twelve.
 
19).  1996, Colorado v. Romer: In 1992, 53.4% of the people of Colorado voted to pass a state wide initiative known as Amendment 2. Amendment 2 was written and put on the ballot as a response to local ordinances in several Colorado municipalities that granted minority status to homosexuals that were not granted to others. The U.S. Supreme Court declared Amendment 2 unconstitutional. Justice Scalia authored the dissenting opinion in which he chastised his fellow justices stating:
 
"Today's opinion has no foundation in American constitutional law and barely pretends to. The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any substantive sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment. Amendment 2 is designed to prevent piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality favored by a majority of Coloradans, and is not only an appropriate means to that legitimate end, but a means that Americans have employed before. Striking it down is an act, not of judicial judgment, but political will."[10]
 
20).  2000, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe: The U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional for students to pray over the loud speaker system before a football game. This ruling set national policy for all the nation's public schools.
 
21).  2003, Texas v. Lawrence: The U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the law of Texas that made homosexual acts illegal. Steve Crampton, lead attorney for the Center for Law and Policy declared, "criminal law is quintessentially morals law….under our constitutional republic, it is the place of the state legislature, acting through its duly elected representatives, to decide what is moral. For a handful of unelected judges to impose their views of morality is not law, it is tyranny."[11] The Court decision struck down sodomy laws in eleven states.
 
To justify their unconstitutional ruling the Court cited foreign law which many legal scholars believe was in itself unconstitutional. "Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion cited a 1967 British Parliament vote repealing laws against homosexual acts and a 1981 European Court of Human Rights decision that those laws were in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights."[12]
 
 
 

[1] Oliver Wendell Holmes, jr. Collected Legal Papers (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920), p.225, "The Law in Science-Science in Law."
 

[2] Final Report of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, December 1993

[3] Benjamin Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921, p.10

[4] Benjamin Cardozo, The Growth of the Law (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1924), p.49

[5] Torcaso. V. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 495, fn. 11 (1961).

[6] Stone v. Graham, 449, U.S. 42 (1980)

[7] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania vs. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania, 505, U.S. 833 (1992).

[8] Family News From Dr. James Dobson, October 1997, Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, Co.

[9] Break-Point with Chuck Colson, March 11, 1996

[10] Scalia, Dissenting opinion, Romer, Governor of Colorado, et al. v. Evans et al. (94-1039), 517 U.S. 620 (1996).

[11] Center for Law and Policy press release, June, 26, 2003.

[12] The Washington Times March 25, 2004 Editorial, Danger From Foreign Precedent