New Hampshire goes to the Supreme Court
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051127/REPOSITORY/511270301/1028/OPINION02
Concord Monitor - Concord,NH,USA

Justice on a wing and a prayer
Good Friday flag case got me to the precipice

By WILBUR A. GLAHN III
For the Monitor
November 27. 2005 8:00AM

I
learned of my chance to argue a case in the U.S. Supreme Court when my
wife
stuck her head in our den at about 9 p.m. on the Thursday before Easter in
1978 and said, "Bill, the Supreme Court of the United States is on the
phone."

After remarks like "Sure, and I'm the king of England," I discovered she
wasn't kidding. On the phone, the court clerk said I should come to
Washington the next morning for a possible hearing. The issue was whether
Gov. Meldrim Thomson could lower the American flag to half-staff on Good
Friday to honor the death of Christ.

The call came at the end of two of the more unusual days in my legal
career. Steven McAuliffe and I were both assistant attorneys general at
the
time, working for Attorney General David Souter. McAuliffe is now a
federal
judge and Souter a Supreme Court justice. On Tuesday of that week,
McAuliffe and I were handed a complaint filed in federal court. The ACLU
was challenging the flag lowering for Good Friday, which the governor had
also done in 1977.

The ACLU said the establishment clause of the First Amendment forbade
this.
At the time, few cases involving symbolic lines between church and state
had been decided, so there was little precedent to go on.

... Given some of Souter's opinions regarding the separation of church and
state, the case shows the difference between defending actions as
constitutional for a ...


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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education

You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why
"a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v.
Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)

. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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