Arguments
The state's principal argument was that Barnette raised no substantial federal question because Gobitis settled the constitutional questions raised by the flag-salute expulsions. The state's brief quoted extensively from Justice Frankfurter's Gobitis opinion. Given the clear indications that at least five justices were ready to lay aside the Gobitis precedent, there was little else the state's lawyers could do. The American Legion's amicus curiae brief filed in support of the state's appeal did little more than duplicate the West Virginia argument.
Hayden Covington answered the state's appeal in a brief that was a mixture of Jehovah's Witnesses Bible teachings and Constitutional arguments. He included a fiery attack on the Court's Gobitis opinion, especially rejecting Justice Frankfurter's deference to legislative policymaking authority. Such deference, he argued, allowed the legislature to define its own powers. He emphasized the nationwide persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses that had followed Gobitis and concluded with a long list of law journal and newspaper articles that criticized the decision. The American Bar Association's Committee on the Bill of Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union filed amicus curiae briefs that argued Gobitis was bad law and should be overruled.
Read more about this topic: West Virginia State Board Of Education V. Barnette
Famous quotes containing the word arguments:
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)
“It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“There is no assurance of the great fact in question [namely, immortality]. All the arguments are mere probabilities, analogies, fancies, whims. We believe, or disbelieve, or are in doubt according to our own make-up—to accidents, to education, to environment. For myself, I do not reach either faith or belief ... that I—the conscious person talking to you—will meet you in the world beyond—you being yourself a conscious person—the same person now reading what I say.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)