Download Discussion Questions Week 5 Week 5 DQ #1: Discuss the

Discussion Questions Week 5
Week 5 DQ #1: Discuss the government's (and especially the Supreme Court's)
role in our First Amendment freedom of religion, including relevant significant
Supreme Court cases.
Religious independence includes the liberty to worship, to print instructional material, to
train teachers and to arrange groups for their job and educational institutions in which to
educate, including religion. Religious independence is defended by 2 clauses in the
First Amendment: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. The first of the
First Amendment's two religion clauses states: Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of faith.
For the first one hundred fifty years of our nation’s historical past, there were not many
occasions for the legal courts to understand the establishment clause since the First
Amendment had not yet been applied to the states of the union. As written, the First
Amendment applied just to Congress and the federal government. In the aftermath of
the Civil War, however, the 14th Amendment was adopted. It reads partly that no state
shall ... deny any individual of life, freedom or property without due process of law... In
1947 the Supreme Court held in Everson versus Board of Education that the
establishment clause is among the liberties safeguarded by the due-process clause.
From that point on, all government action, regardless at the federal government, state
government, or local level, should follow the restrictions of the establishment clause. To
assist understand the establishment clause; the Court utilizes a lot of tests, including the
Lemon, coercion, endorsement as well as neutrality tests.
The Lemon Test takes its name from the 1971 verdict Lemon versus Kurtzman, when
the Court struck down a state program giving help to religious primary and secondary
educational institutions. Utilizing the Lemon test, a court should first decide if the law or
government action under consideration has a genuine secular purpose. Second, a court
would inquire if the state action has got the primary influence of advancing or
suppressing faith. Ultimately, the court would think about if the action excessively
entangles faith and government. In its 1997 verdict Agostini versus Felton, the Supreme
Court changed the Lemon test. By merging the last two factors, the Court now utilized
just the aim prong and a changed version of the effects prong. Some justices suggest
permitting more government assistance for religion compared to the Lemon test
permits. These types of justices support the use of a test specified by Justice Anthony
Kennedy in his dissent in County of Allegheny versus ACLU and referred to as the
coercion test. Under this test the government doesn't breach the establishment clause
until it (1) provides direct help to religion in a manner that would have a tendency to
establish a state church, or (2) coerces individuals to help or take part in faith against
their will. Under this type of test, the government would be allowed to erect these types
of religious symbols as a Nativity scene standing alone in a public school or other public
building at Xmas.
The endorsement test, suggested by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, inquires whether a
specific government action amounts to an endorsement of faith. She indicated her
understanding of the establishment clause in the 1984 case of Lynch versus Donnelly,
in which she says, The Establishment Clause forbids government from making
adherence to a religion related in any respect to a person's standing in the political
community.
While the Court looks to the endorsement test in issues of expression, queries involving
usage of government money are progressively decided under the rubric of neutrality.
Under neutrality, the government would deal with religious groups exactly like other
similarly positioned groups. This treatment permits religious schools to take part in a
commonly available voucher program, permits states to supply computer systems to
both religious as well as public schools, and permits states to supply reading teachers
to low-performing students, even when they go to a religious school.
"Congress shall make no law barring the free activity (of faith)" is known as the freeexercise clause of the First Amendment. The free-exercise clause relates to the legal
right to freely exercise one's faith. The courts put some restrictions on the exercise of
faith. The Supreme Court has held that religious independence should give way to
affordable limitations which have been adopted to defend the health, safety and ease of
the whole community. For instance, courts won't hold that the First Amendment defends
human sacrifice even though some religion required it.
The first Supreme Court case which tackled the problem of free exercise was Reynolds
versus U.S. (1878), in which the Court upheld a federal regulation prohibiting polygamy
over objections by Mormons that claimed that the practice was their religious obligation.
In its 1963 verdict Sherbert versus Verner, the Supreme Court found out that the
Constitution provided at least some level of government accommodation of religious
practices. Adele Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, was dismissed by her South
Carolina employer since she wouldn't work on Saturday, her faith’s Sabbath. When she
couldn't find other job which would not require her to work on Saturday, she submitted a
claim for joblessness benefits. The state refused Sherbert benefits, stating she had not
accepted proper job when offered, though she was needed to work on her Sabbath. The
verdict was upheld by the South Carolina Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court
reversed the state court verdict.
In Wisconsin versus Yoder, the Court held that the state’s interest in requiring a child’s
mandatory presence at school through age 16, although essential, couldn't withstand a
free-exercise claim by members of the Amish religious sect. An Amish family claimed
that needing their kids to go to public schools after age 14 would expose them to worldly
effects against their traditionalist values and weaken the insular Amish community.
Week 5 DQ#2: Discuss the government's (all 3 branches) role in the War on Terror
and how their efforts agree with or disagree with the Constitution.
In September 2006, Congress passed the contentious Military Commissions Act (MCA)
that details the laws for the trials. The Act was okayed by party-line votes of 253-168 in
the House and 65-34 in the Senate. Supporters were mainly Republicans, opponents
mainly Democrats.
The dispute is about these regulations and whether they breach the Constitution and
the Geneva Conventions. Four Geneva Conventions were developed by reps of the
U.S. as well as other countries in 1949 to create rules for war which most countries
accept. Supporters of the MCA maintain that foreign terrorist suspects must not always
be permitted to claim constitutional rights as well as privileges assured to Americans.
They believe that some Geneva Convention rules aren't suitable for the "war on terror"
and may make it more difficult. They assert that allowing some of these legal rights and
rules to terror suspects may endanger American citizens. For them the MCA provides
the president powers he requires to fight that war.
Critics of the MCA maintain that it violates the Constitution as well as the Geneva
Conventions and allows unsupervised powers to the president in a government that is
expected to be based on laws, and not on trust.
The National Security Act is employed by the federal government like a cloak to avoid
the American people and our elected authorities from knowing how much and where our
tax money is spent from secret operations all over the world. The National Security Act
stops the release of Executive Orders and Presidential Decision. Directives to the
American citizens and our elected representatives.
The USA PATRIOT Act allows arrests without warrants and secret detention without
lawyer, wiretaps without court supervision, searches and seizures without notice to the
person whose property is invaded, and a lot of other violations of the legal safeguards
our nation has traditionally developed as per principles descending from the Fourth and
Fifth Amendments.