ABA House of Delegates Calls for Defense of Civil Liberties
The House of Delegates of the American Bar Association (ABA) on this day instructed its two-year old Bill of Rights Committee to condemn all violations of civil liberties.
The committee was instructed to file amicus briefs in two cases involving children of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had refused to participate in compulsory flag salutes in schools. Both cases are expected to go to the Supreme Court.
The ABA created its Committee on the Bill of Rights in 1938, and filed an amicus brief in the historic Hague v. C.I.O. case, involving the denial of First Amendment rights to labor organizers in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Read: Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (2000)
Learn about the important Jehovah’s Witnesses cases: Shawn Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (2000)