Jefferson's Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion

Except for Rhode Island, each of the thirteen American colonies created some form of established religion. The English venturists who undertook settlements in New England and Virginia simply assumed that religion would be inextricably tied to their colonial enterprises. ¹ The 1606 charter creating the Virginia colony required that all ministers preach Christianity that followed the “doctrine, rights, and religion now professed and established within the realme of England”—in other words, the Church of England. ² To bolster the struggling Jamestown settlement, in 1610–11, Sir Thomas Dale promulgated “Articles, Lawes, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martiall for the Colony in Virginia.” Clergymen were to read “Dale's Laws,” as they were labeled, to assemblies every Sabbath. The thirty‐seven rules included eight that specifically referred to God and prohibited impiety, blasphemy, sacrilege, and irreverence toward preachers or ministers. The sixth law was particularly notable for its strict religious requirements and harsh penalties for violations: “Every man and woman duly twice a day … shall … repair unto the Church to divine service upon pain of losing his or her days allowance for the first omission, for the second to be whipped, and for the third to be condemned to the Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or woman shall dare to violate or break the Sabbath by any gaming … but duly sanctify and observe the same, both himself and his family, by preparing themselves at home with private prayer, that they may be better fitted for the public according to the commandments of God and the orders of our Church. …” ³ Colonists faced the death penalty after the third offense of missing morning and afternoon Sunday devotional services.     

The Supreme Court and Juvenile Justice

For so many things I thank the Historical Society profoundly, but place right at the top of my list the delightful opportunity your invitation has given me to read the prior Annual Lectures—interesting, exciting, thoroughly intimidating—touching on the Court's history, its cases, its people, even its wives (the subject of Justice Ginsburg's 1999 lecture). Wholly apart from the Society's many initiatives to preserve the Court's history and increase public awareness of its contributions to our nation, the now nearly three dozen Annual Lectures alone offer an amazing insight into this great institution.     

Thomas Jefferson and the Rise of the Supreme Court

American constitutional history in the early national period seems at times to be a conversation—or an argument—among Virginians. There's James Madison, George Washington, George Mason, John Taylor of Caroline County, Judge Spencer Roane, John Randolph of Roanoke, to mention only some. At the center of this constellation were John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson.     

President Jefferson's Three Appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States: 1804, 1807, and 1807

In endeavoring to set the stage for an examination and analysis of Mr. Jefferson's three appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, a summary glance into those of his two predecessors, George Washington and John Adams, both Federalists, is apposite.     

Biased Justice: James C. McReynolds of the Supreme Court of the United States

James Clark McReynolds was a man who people only spoke of in superlatives—most of them unflattering.     

Failing Justice: Charles Evans Whittaker of the Supreme Court , by Craig Alan Smith

Is there any value in judicial biographies? Is not the time of educators better spent writing on other matters, cutting edge issues which can have a significant impact on important questions of the day?     

The Nominations Presidents Make: Appointing Supreme Court Justices

This paper tests the hypothesis that presidents are more successful in Congress during their first hundred days in office. Analyzing an original dataset composed of the bills on which presidents took official positions, it finds that presidents indeed have higher success rates during the first hundred days of their first year than they do later during their first year or during the first hundred days of noninaugural years. This effect is strongest for presidents who face divided government.     

The Invisible Dance: The Supreme Court and the Press

Abstract

In America, Tocqueville writes, men were born equal; they did not have to become so.¹ But he is not unaware of the radical democratic character of the American revolution of which Gordon Wood has reminded us.² Prior to 1776, Tocqueville observes, the democratic principle was “far from dominating the government of society.” It was the Revolution that made it “the law of laws.” “The war was fought and victory obtained in its name” (1:1, ch. 4. 59).