To construe it as breaking down the common law barriers against licentious, wanton, and impious attacks upon Christianity itself, would be an enormous perversion of its meaning. . . . Christianity, in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our law. . . . The case involved a man arrested for publicly criticizing the Christian religion. Legal analysis and writing by Susan Batte, Esq. The American temperament looked askance at prosecutions for bad opinions.
Appellate records exist, though appellate decisions on blasphemy occur infrequently.
The practice has become more common these days, but the effect of such trial court opinions is the same. In our legal system, trial court opinions have no precedent value. Such opinions exist only to serve the particular court from which it originates, and even then, if a court contains more than one court room and more than one judge, opinions may vary from courtroom to courtroom. Kent is considered the American version of Blackstone, and since opinion in People v. Ruggles exists as the first reported state case on blasphemy, there has to be some suspicion that he heard the appeal simply to give him the opportunity to write about his interpretation of blasphemy law in America. I imagine such an event would occasion a great deal of publicity.