From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: State Universities & First Amendment
Keywords: _McCollum v. Board of Education_, 333 U.S. 203 (1948).
Date: 1 Sep 92 16:15:32 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <1992Aug31.170014.9477@m.cs.uiuc.edu> 
kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:

>matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt) writes:

>>   "In the United States Naval Academy and the United States
>>    Military Academy, schools wholly supported and completely
>>    controlled by the federal government, there are a number
>>    of religious activities.  Chaplains are attached to both
>>    schools.  Attendance at church services on Sunday is
>>    compulsory at both the Military and Naval Academies.  At
>>    West Point the Protestant services are held in the Cadet
>>    Chapel, the Catholic in the Catholic Chapel, and the Jewish
>>    in the Old Cadet Chapel; at Annapolis only Protestant 
>>    Services are held on the reservation, midshipmen of other
>>    religious persuasions attend the churches of the city of
>>    Annapolis."  333 U.S. 203, at 254-55, Reed, J., dissenting.

>The military academies are treated differently from other state-owned
>schools because they are military.   [Carl Kadie]

Even such a strict separationist as Professor Leo Pfeffer goes along
with chaplains in the military:

     "Chaplains in the armed forces may be necessary under the
      constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience.  A
      soldier drafted into the armed forces and sent to a camp
      far from his home is deprived of the opportunity to visit
      a church."  _Church, State, and Freedom, rev. ed. (Boston:
                  Beacon Press, 1967), p. 169.

But the cadets and midshipmen at the Military and Naval Academies
are not draftees.  They are volunteers, every one.  Nor are they
in a war zone, nor in a church-and-synagogue-hating desert like
Saudi Arabia.  Indeed, the Catholic and Jewish midshipmen of 1947
attended services at privately-built churches and synagogues in the 
city of Annapolis.  If the Constitution really requires a high wall 
of separation between Church and State, what is the justification 
for the Protestant chapel at the Naval Academy?  And why can't West 
Point cadets worship at churches and synagogues in Newburgh, a short
ride away?  Why should they have the benefit of government-built
houses of worship, while at the same time a state university should
be forbidden from providing one lousy room in which some of its
students can say Mass?

>In any case, around 1972, the Supreme Court "let stand a lower-court
>ruling that had struck down the Defense Department's policy of
>requring cadets in government military academies to attend chapel.
>Whatever the special powers of the military might be, the court ruled,
>they did not include compelling religious belief and practice."
>[_Visions of Liberty_ by Ira Glasser, p. 82, quoted by Carl Kadie]

That's a "free exercise" issue, not an "establishment" issue.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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