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:
“Through Plato Aristotle came to believe in God, but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him, but Aristotle thought God through logically and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“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)
“Because a person is born the subject of a given state, you deny the sovereignty of the people? How about the child of Cuban slaves who is born a slave, is that an argument for slavery? The one is a fact as well as the other. Why then, if you use legal arguments in the one case, you don’t in the other?”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)