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Basically, using the letter against the spirit which is done quite often in our judicial system today.
What about the Supreme Court abusing the spirit of the law to wiggle out of the letter of the law, such as was done in the case of Holy Trinity v. U. S. (1892).
I don't think he made that statement when interpreting a law.
I never said it was an argument over the law. I am speaking of the abuse of rules to oblige alternatives in meaning. It is merely a "general" example of how words and their "rules" can be confused to imply different meanings. The interpretation of law is no different.
Honestly Flash, you understand what I mean. Ive said what I intended to say, if you want to discuss details and start dissecting court cases and arguing over the issue, then I have no real interest in that.
The decision of Holy Trinity Church v. United States has been used by Christian fundamentalists to support their claim that our nation was founded on religion. The decision is an aberration of the rules of construction and judicial interpretation. The unsupported statement of Justice Brewer to the effect that America is a Christian nation was not in any way pertinent to the court’s ruling or even be considered the ratio decidendi of the court’s opinion in the case; and it has been criticized in subsequent decisions by the court. See e.g., Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U.S. 440 (1989). Even Justice Antonin Scalia, who is not shy about reconciling his legal opinions with his religious convictions, has criticized the Holy Trinity Church case as an example of legislating from the bench. Nor is Justice Brewer’’s statement correct. The founders of our country did not intend to create a theocracy. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence - George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention - and James Madison, who drafted the Constitution (and the First Amendment) - all declared that our nation was not founded on religion. The separation of church and state is the founding principle in the protection of religious freedom as provided in the First Amendment to the Constitution; and, moreover, the Supreme Court has so interpreted it. Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing TP. et al., 330 U.S. 1 (1947).
No, that is an illustration of what will happen if religion is made to be the basis of our nation of laws. If you say that our nation was founded on religion, that only begs the question: "Which religion?" - or "Which sect of the Christian religion?" To do so would be to return to the horrors of the Inquisition and the iniquities of the Court of Star Chamber. That is not what the framers of our Constitution (and the First Amendment) had in mind.
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