Court Opinion

ID: 9418826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:40:38.759782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:12:24.626560
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Caedozo.
Concurring in the opinion I wish to say an extra word.
I assume for present purposes that the religious liberty protected by the First Amendment against invasion by the nation is protected by' the Fourteenth Amendment against invasion by the states.
Accepting that premise, I cannot find in the respondents’ ordinance an obstruction by the state to “ the free exercise ” of religion as the phrase was understood by the founders of the nation, and by the generations that have followed. Davis v. Beason, 133 U. S. 333, 342.
There is no occasion at this time to mark the limits of governmental power in the exaction of military service when the nation is at peace.* The petitioners have not been required to bear arms for any hostile purpose, offensive or defensive, either now or in the future. They have *266not even been required in any absolute or peremptory way to join in courses of instruction that will fit them to bear arms. If they elect to resort to an institution for higher education maintained with the state’s moneys, then and only then they are commanded to follow courses of instruction believed by the state to be vital to its welfare. This may be condemned by some as unwise or illiberal or unfair when there is violence to conscientious scruples, either religious or merely ethical. More must be shown to set the ordinance at naught. In controversies of this order courts do not concern themselves with matters of legislative policy, unrelated to privileges or liberties secured by the organic law. The First Amendment, if it be read into the Fourteenth, makes invalid any state law “ respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Instruction in military science is not instruction in the practice or tenets of a religion. Neither directly nor indirectly is government establishing a state religion when it insists upon such training. Instruction in military science, unaccompanied here by any pledge of military service, is not an interference by the state with the free exercise of religion when the liberties of the constitution are read in the light of a century and a half of history during days of peace and war.
The meaning of those liberties has striking illustration in statutes that were enacted in colonial times and later. They will be found collected in the opinion of the lower court in United States v. Macintosh, 42 F. (2d) 845, 847, 848; 283 U. S. 605, 632, and more fully in the briefs of counsel. From the beginnings of our history Quakers and other conscientious objectors have been exempted as an act of grace from military service, but the exemption, when granted, has been coupled with a condition, at least in many instances, that they supply the army with a substitute or with the money necessary to hire, one. This *267was done in Virginia in 1738 and 1782 (5 Hening 16; 11 id. 18; cf. 8 id. 242, 243; 10 id. 261, 262; 334, 335); in Massachusetts, (Acts and Resolves, 1758, vol. 4, p. 159; 1759, 4 id. 193); in North Carolina (1781, 24 State Records 156); and in New York (Colonial Laws, 1755, vol. 3, pp. 1068, 1069). A like practice has been continued in the constitutions of many of the states. See, e.'g., Constitution of Alabama, 1819, 1865, 1867 (F. N. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws, vol. 1, pp. 105, 119, 147); Arkansas, 1868 (Thorpe, vol. 1, p-. 325); Colorado, 1876 (Thorpe, vol. 1, p. 507); Idaho, 1889 (Thorpe, vol. 2, p. 943); Illinois, 1819, 1870 (Thorpe, vol. 2, pp. 980, 1044); Indiana, 1816 (Thorpe, vol. 2, p. 1067); Iowa, 1846, 1857 (Thorpe, vol. 2, pp. 1132, 1148); Kansas, 1855, 1857, 1859 (Thorpe, vol. 2, pp. 1190, 1214, 1253); Kentucky, 1792, 1799, 1850, 1890 (Thorpe, vol. 3, pp. 1271, 1283, 1307, 1350); Louisiana, 1879, 1898 (Thorpe, vol. 3, pp. 1501, 1587); Michigan, 1850 (Thorpe, vol. 4, p. 1966); Mississippi, 1817 (Thorpe, vol. 4, p. 2041); Missouri, 1820, 1875 (Thorpe, vol. 4, pp. 2164, 2268; New Hampshire, 1794, 1902 (Thorpe, vol. 4, pp. 2472, 2495); New York, 1821, 1846 (Thorpe, vol. 5, pp. 2648, 2671); Pennsylvania, 1790, 1838 (Thorpe, vol. 5, pp. 3099, 3111); Vermont, 1793 (Thorpe, vol. 6, p. 3763). For one opposed to force, the affront to conscience must be greater in furnishing men and money wherewith to wage a pending contest than in studying military science without the duty or the pledge of service. Never in our history has the notion been accepted, or even, it is believed, advanced, that acts thus indirectly related to service in the camp or field are so tied to the practice of religion as to be exempt, in law or in morals, from regulation by the state. On the contrary, the very lawmakers who were willing to give release from warlike acts had no thought that they were doing any*268thing inconsistent with the moral claims of an objector, still less with his constitutional immunities, in coupling the exemption with these collateral conditions.
Manifestly a different doctrine would carry us to lengths that have never yet been dreamed of. The conscientious objector, if his liberties were to be thus extended, might refuse to contribute taxes in furtherance of a war, whether for attack or for defense, or in furtherance of any other end condemned by his conscience as irreligious or immoral. The right of private judgment has never yet been so exalted above the powers and the compulsion of the agencies of government. One who is a martyr to a principle — which may turn out in the end to be a delusion or an error — does not prove by his martyrdom that he has kept within the law.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Brandéis and Mr. Justice Stone join in this opinion.

 As to the duty of the able-bodied citizen to aid in suppressing crime, see Babington v. Yellow Taxi Corp., 250 N. Y. 14, 16; 164 N. E. 726, and the authorities there assembled.