Suchergebnisse

The public school system is the major American social institution responsible for the transmission of our democratic heritage to present and future generations. In fulfilling this responsibility, the schools often confront problems involving their duty to inculcate students with a sense of patriotism. Probably the most controversial questions have concerned compulsory flag saluting and participation in patriotic exercises. Can a school demand that students salute the flag? Questions such as this arise under circumstances where students, allegedly exercising First Amendment rights, clash with school authorities engaged in the promulgation and enforcement of school rules. This interplay of educational order and students' rights, and the multi-faceted questions which arise therefrom, have been the subject of several recent court cases which raise once again, usually with significant extension of underlying principles, questions that gained national prominence on the eve of World War II.

In Minersville School District vs Gobitis (1940) the United States Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 overturning lower court decisions barring states from implementing compulsory flag salutes. Three years later, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling with a 6 to 3 decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). The cases were nearly identical and argued similarly but had different outcomes. How did the landscape of America change so drastically in a three-year period? First, the Supreme Court did not see a danger in the rise of nationalism in the United States or the social impact the ruling would bring. Second, the violence that followed Gobitis decision caused Jehovah's Witnesses, a pacifist group that was uninvolved in politics, to become more persistent in utilizing the legal system and more vocal concerning persecution of its members. Finally, the Supreme Court was not the same. A change in justices and a shift in the focus of the Court from economic matters to personal liberties created a different political landscape, when West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnett reached the Court in 1943.