A few weeks earlier, moreover, the Court had indicated an intention to scrutinize more closely the basis of its jurisdiction in this class of cases. This occurred in a case in which the question involved was the validity of a New Jersey statute which requires the reading at the opening of each public school day of five verses of the Old Testament.[33] The Court held that appellant's interest as taxpayers was insufficient to constitute a justiciable case or controversy, while as to the alleged rights of the child involved the case had become moot with her graduation from school.[34]
PERMISSIBLE MONETARY AIDS TO RELIGION
In 1899 the Court held that an agreement between the District of Columbia and the directors of a hospital chartered by Congress for erection of a building and treatment of poor patients at the expense of the District was valid despite the fact that the members of the Corporation belonged to a monastic order or sisterhood of a particular church.[35] It has also sustained a contract made at the request of Indians to whom money was due as a matter of right, under a treaty, for the payment of such money by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the support of Indian Catholic schools.[36] In 1930 the use of public funds to furnish nonsectarian textbooks to pupils in parochial schools of Louisiana was sustained,[37] and in 1947, as we have seen, the case of public funds for the transportation of pupils attending such schools in New Jersey.[38] In the former of these cases the Court cited the State's interest in secular education even when conducted in religious schools; in the latter its concern for the safety of school children on the highways; and the National School Lunch Act,[39] which aids all school children attending tax-exempt schools can be similarly justified. The most notable financial concession to religion, however, is not to be explained in this way, the universal practice of exempting religious property from taxation. This unquestionably traces back to the idea expressed in the Northwest Ordnance that Government has an interest in religion as such.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: DIMENSIONS
The First Amendment "was intended to allow every one under the jurisdiction of the United States to entertain such notions respecting his relations to his Maker and the duties they impose as may be approved by his judgment and conscience, and to exhibit his sentiments in such form of worship as he may think proper, not injurious to the equal rights of others, and to prohibit legislation for the support of any religious tenets, or the modes of worship of any sect. The oppressive measures adopted, and the cruelties and punishments inflicted, by the governments of Europe for many ages, to compel parties to conform, in their religious beliefs and modes of worship, to the views of the most numerous sect, and the folly of attempting in that way to control the mental operations of persons, and enforce an outward conformity to a prescribed standard, led to the adoption of (this) amendment."[40] "The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus the Amendment embraces two concepts,—freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute, but in the nature of things, the second cannot be."[41]
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
The Society of Sisters, an Oregon corporation, was empowered by its charter to care for orphans and to establish and maintain schools and academies for the education of the youth. Systematic instruction and moral training according to the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church was given in its establishments along with education in the secular branches. By an Oregon statute, effective September 1, 1926, it was required that every parent, or other person having control or charge or custody of a child between eight and sixteen years send him "to a public school for the period of time a public school shall be held during the current year" in the district where the child resides; and failure so to do was declared a misdemeanor. The District Court of The United States for Oregon enjoined the enforcement of the statute and the Supreme Court unanimously sustained its action,[42] holding that the measure unreasonably interfered with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control—a liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. While the First Amendment was not mentioned in the Court's opinion, the subsequent absorption of its religious clauses into the Fourteenth Amendment seems to make the case relevant to the question of their proper interpretation.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: FEDERAL RESTRAINTS
Religious belief cannot be pleaded as a justification for an overt act made criminal by the law of the land. "Laws are made for the government of action, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices."[43] To permit a man to excuse conduct in violation of law on the ground of religious belief "would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."[44] It does not follow that "because no mode of worship can be established or religious tenets enforced in this country, therefore any tenets, however destructive of society, may be held and advocated, if asserted, to be a part of the religious doctrine of those advocating and practicing them * * * Whilst legislation for the establishment of a religion is forbidden, and its free exercise permitted, it does not follow that everything which may be so-called can be tolerated. Crime is not the less odious because sanctioned by what any particular sect may designate as religion."[45] Accordingly acts of Congress directed against either the practice of the advocacy of polygamy by members of a religious sect which sanctioned the practice, were held valid.[46] But when, in the Ballard Case,[47] decided in 1944, the promoters of a religious sect, whose founder had at different times identified himself as Saint Germain, Jesus, George Washington, and Godfre Ray King, were convicted of using the mails to defraud by obtaining money on the strength of having supernaturally healed hundreds of persons, they found the Court in a softened frame of mind. Although the trial judge, carefully discriminating between the question of the truth of defendants' pretensions and that of their good faith in advancing them, had charged the jury that it could pass on the latter but not the former, this caution did not avail with the Court, which contrived on another ground ultimately to upset the verdict of "guilty." The late Chief Justice Stone, speaking for himself and Justices Roberts and Frankfurter, dissented: "I cannot say that freedom of thought and worship includes freedom to procure money by making knowingly false statements about one's religious experiences."[48]
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: STATE AND LOCAL RESTRAINTS