How does the swearing on the Bible fit in to the secular nature of the USA government? I was told that this may be an interesting premise for a new question. I had the following interaction in the comments of this question. It always striked me as odd that a secular state like the US would use a religious document as such a key part of a government proceeding. (assuming they still do that) This was in reference to the issue of swearing on the Bible in the US. A comment to which David Siegel replied They do still do that. That would be a good separate question. The basic reason is that this procedure was inherited like much US court procedure from England, and for much of its existence the UD had thought of itself not as a secular state, but as a multi-faith religious state with built-in toleration, and only in the 20th C has much of that toleration been actually enforced. Until 1867 states were free to have established religions, and some did. (Mass and Maryland are examples.) The mere fact that some states actually had established religions, even if it ended 160-odd-years ago is to me incredible. The premise of the US seems to be a country free of a monarchy and established religion seemed to be a big part of what makes the US, the US, or at least a big part of how it is sold to foreigners wanting to live there. So the idea that the US for a certain part of it's history did not think of itself as a secular state, but a multi-faith, tolerant state seems a very intriguing one. Also it seems so completely antithetical to how it is perceived today (Not the tolerant part, but the multi-faith part). So back to the issue at hand. If we accept that the US has moved away from the idea of a multi-faith state and indeed into a secular one, how are these vestiges of the old system still enforced or defended?
You don’t have to swear Witnesses are given the option to swear (technically take an oath) or to affirm, which has no religious connotations. You also don’t actually swear on a Bible if you do swear. For example california. The US is a very religious state france is a secular state - it prohibits religious clothing (hijabs, crucifixes etc.) in schools. The united-kingdom (specifically England) has an official state religion (Anglican) but religion is far less prevalent in politics or society than it is in the US. For example, outside of a place of worship, who your mother is sleeping with is a far more acceptable topic of conversation than what her religious beliefs are. Which is not to say it actually is an acceptable topic of conversation, just that it’s more acceptable than religion. australia elected its first openly atheist Prime Minister in 1983. The US was not founded on the idea that there shouldn’t be established religion, just that there shouldn’t be a state religion - that is, a church backed by the power of the government. Many of the early settlers were fleeing religious prosecution from state religions. Nevertheless, it was never the intention to exclude religion from politics. Indeed, religion in the US influences politics to a much greater degree than it does in most European or Anglophone countries.
The US developed from an earlier kingdom, and the First Amendment enshrines the main issue that led to our departure from that kingdom. The underlying political premise has been that disagreement is to be dealt with rationally and not through force, such as where opinions contrary to those articulated by the government are squashed (in order to eliminate divisions). There have been numerous laws passed in the US to outlaw "contrary" speech including "disrespectful" speech, and they are constantly being overturned by the Supreme Court. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 and U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 are two recent reaffirmations that such laws are unconstitutional. The only way such a law can work is if the Constitution is amended to in some way re-write the First Amendment, like this. Outlawing indirect insults towards political figures ("not my Speaker of the House", "not my FBI director") would require an even more extensive suspension of the First Amendment. It is possible that at some time, a bill was introduced to outlaw saying disparaging things about POTUS, but I would be surprised if it got out of committee, because it would fail challenge in court. The most-likely retrenchment on our freedom of expression is likely to be a flag-burning law, which has relatively wide support in the US. There are a number of interpretive problems associated with the key concept "physical desecration". Even more interpretive problems would arise if Congress were given the power (via an anti-disparagement amendment) to outlaw "disparagement of public officials". Can one simultaneously "respect the Office of the President" and "disrespect the holder of the office"? As for specifically restricting the military, that's a challenging issue. It is a court-martial offense for a commissioned military officer to use contemptuous words against the President and Congress (10 USC 888), and by directive from the Department of Defense this also applies to enlisted personnel. SCOTUS in Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733 articulated the Military Necessity doctrine, that "The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it". So "not my President" probably is illegal for soldiers. This article reviews various First Amendment issues as they pertain to the military.
From Roberts' dissenting opinion: Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition. (The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system.) In my opinion, this quote speaks as much to the second question as the first. Assume (hypothetically) for a moment that question one was not at issue. If a state defined marriage as only between opposite sexes, and the right to make a state change its definition of marriage is not in the Supreme Court's purview (in our hypo), then the state is as free to reject the validity of marriages abhorrent to its laws, performed elsewhere, as it is to deny the right to marry under its theory of marriage.
No, and certainly not for the reason implied (essentially a one spouse per jurisdiction in which one has citizenship rule which doesn't exist anywhere). At least under the law of every U.S. jurisdiction, you cannot be married to more than one person at the same time (anywhere in the world), and it is a crime to do so. Several dozen countries in the world recognize polygamy as legal (mostly in predominantly Muslim countries, not all of which allow polygamy, and in Africa where pre-Christian custom permits it), of course, and this does not violate the laws of those jurisdictions. The U.K. does not generally permit polygamy, but gives some recognition to and does not criminalize, polygamous marriages entered into in a place where it is lawful. But the concept proposed in the question would still not be legal under U.K. law. UPDATE: A California court ruling concurs with this analysis.
Merely encouraging people not to vaccinate via educational and political communication without purporting to provide individualized medical advice is probably not the practice of medicine and protected by the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech, rather than constituting medical malpractice. Also, many anti-vax individuals (I couldn't quote a percentage) do so out of religious conviction and are protected not just by the freedom of speech in the First Amendment, but also by the free exercise component of the freedom of religion under the First Amendment. Generally speaking, it is harder to find a legal grounds for disregarding the free exercise of religion than it is to find a legal basis to regulate otherwise free speech. For example, commercial speech is subject to more rigorous regulation than private political and educational speech, which is why there are no private businesses taking anti-vax positions in their advertising. The theory is that courts are not in a good position to make general determinations of the truth of policy positions or statements about general truths as opposed to what happened in a particular transaction or occurrence. This is in part because a ruling by the right court at the right time can preclude the correctness of its determination from being revisited indefinitely and from time to time, accepted conventional wisdom and scientific consensus at one time are revealed later on to have been wrong with more discussion and investigation. I think that this is unlikely to be the case in the vaccination area, but the whole point of the First Amendment's protection of these kinds of issues is that we can't know in advance what will continue to be widely accepted and what will turn out to be mistaken. But, if someone in a medical diagnosis and treatment profession (e.g. M.D., D.O., physician's assistant, or nurse), were to advise a patient in a capacity as a medical care provider not to vaccinate, and as a result that person's child got sick from a disease that vaccination could have prevented, there probably would be medical malpractice liability. A somewhat similar issue arises when health insurance companies or government agencies set rules on providing care. In those cases, it isn't uncommon to have a physician or other medical professional placed on a committee or in an office such as medical director, with that person making the call and exposed to liability although not in the same way as a treating medical professional. A case about a month ago found malpractice by an insurance company's medical director (the company was United Health) to be a huge liability for both the medical director and the insurance company.
Probably not. I can't find the new text, but the existing law was probably just amended with a new category: &quot;hate speech&quot; based on race, religion, disability and &quot;homosexual leanings, lifestyle, or orientation&quot; was illegal – this new law seems to just tweak the categories. The Supreme Court has addressed the general law here in a race-based case, stating that expression of contempt is crucial to defining the crime (&quot;to threaten or insult, or promote hatred, persecution or contempt&quot; based on a protected category). The line that would be drawn is between reading the text, versus promoting hatred or contempt using the text as justification. You can't be prosecuted for hate speech in Norway by reporting the existence of racial etc. discrimination.
Westphalian Sovereignty Israel has decided that this is the law in Israel and they are the only one who gets a say in this. The concept of the modern nation-state can trace its origins to the Treaty of Westphalia (possibly - there is disagreement among historians and political scientists but for our purposes we'll just let them get on with it) which ended the 30-years war. This was a complex and dynamic conflict of which one of the contentious issues was who had the right to determine the laws in a particular territory, particularly religious laws - the local prince/king/duke etc. or the Emporer. Long story short - it wasn't the Emporer. This is embodied in Article 2(1) of the UN charter: The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members. That is, Israel and only Israel gets to decide what the law is in Israel. Which is to say, that what the law is in Israel is down to internal Israeli politics. Israel is a democracy so this is down to democratic politics. International law only allows involvement when the actions of a sovereign state (UN member or otherwise) infringe on the peace and stability of other sovereign states. I realise that there is a whole area of discussion here but suffice it to say that the internal operations of the UN are political rather than legal. However, laws on marriage in Israel seem unlikely to have international peace and security implications.
The Fifth Amendment, and all the other amendments in the "Bill of Rights" (numbers 1-10) were universally understood when passed to be restrictions on the Federal Government only. The courts treated them that way through the end of the US Civil War. This was made definite in the US Supreme Court case Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833) Since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment the courts have decided that most of the provisions of the bill of rights also apply to actions by the states. A few do not apply, such as the requirement that indictments be by a grand jury, and the Third Amendment ban on quartering soldiers in private dwellings. This was done through a somewhat roundabout mechanism -- the Supreme Court decided that the protections of the Bill of Rights were included in the Due process clause of the 14th. As a result not all the provisions were made applicable at the same time. (Most were held to be incorporated during the period from 1925-1985. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) thru Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984)). Modern legal opinions sometimes discuss incorporation as if it was a fact from the passage of the 14th in 1868. But the actual gradual process is clear in the case law. For example, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in criminal cases was first incorporated in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), but only for death penalty cases, and only if "special circumstances" existed, such as a defendant who was illiterate, far from home and support, or feeble-minded. Later cases gradually found "special circumstances" in more and more fact patterns, and in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963) the Court extended the right to all felony cases. It has later been extended to misdemeanor cases if jail time is a possible result. A similar history could be spelled out for the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, or for the Fourth's against search and seizure, particularly the "exclusionary rule". I, and a number of legal scholars who have better rights to an opinion, think that the 14th's "Privileges and Immunities" clause would have been a more sensible means to this end, but for various reasons that isn't how it was done. Justice Thomas seems to be trying to reverse this -- he has made comments in a number of opinions of late that various things should be protected under the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th, rather than the Due Process clause.. Even if the Court adopts this theory, it probably won't change many outcomes. That is how the Fifth, and other Bill of rights Provisions like the Fourth (search and seizure) and the First (free speech and religion) have been applied to restrict the states. None of these provisions directly restrict private individuals. In some cases, courts have said that while individuals may not be forbidden to do things that are forbidden to governments under the Bill of Rights, the courts will not help you do such things, such as by enforcing contracts to do them. No person shall be held to answer for a... crime "held to answer" here means prosecuted in court. Only governments do that. That provision forbids criminal court cases that do not start with a grand Jury indictment. it is one of the few Bill of Rights provisions which the Supreme Court has held do not apply to the states. But in any case it is purely procedural. It doesn't say that crimes may not be prosecuted, nor that they must. It says only "if you want to try someone for a crime, this is a step you must go through." The other provisions of the Fifth all do apply to the states, such as the ban on double jeopardy, and the protection against self-incrimination. does that mean that government can declare it legal for citizens to kill a particular person? No. That would violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process clause if don3 by the Federal Government, and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause and its Equal Protection clause if done by a state. It would probably also violate the provision against Bills of Attainder, and perhaps the provision against cruel and unusual punishment. Once upon a time, several hundred years before the US was founded, the government of England did just that. It was called "outlawry". For certain crimes, the punishment was to be put "outside the law". An "outlaw" (in this older sense) was not protected by the law. Anyone could kill an outlaw, or steal from one, and the legal system would do nothing about it. The US has never used outlawry.