You can read the full article, “Historical Significance of a Kentucky Colonel Named Harlan,” as published in the Baton Rouge Bar Journal by clicking here.

Here are a few of these interesting letters:

Click to read Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Letter

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Click to read Clarence Thomas Letter

Clarence Thomas Letter

Click to read Samuel Alito’s Letter 

Samuel Alito Letter

Now working fulltime at RJA, Jason is developing new approaches to our communications presence and helping to develop donor relations. His wise leadership and increased involvement will multiply our effectiveness as an organization as we engage courts throughout the nation. In addition, new interns, including a few young attorneys, are joining us as our team continues to expand.

It is thrilling to watch God equipping Retired Judges of America for an active year!

If the fight between the “Christian nation” advocates and mainstream thinkers could be focused onto a single element, it would be the “wall of separation” phrase. Christian thinkers like to point out that it does not appear in the Constitution, nor in any other legal document — letters that presidents write to their supporters are not legal decrees. Besides which, after the phrase left Jefferson’s pen it more or less disappeared for a century and a half — until Justice Hugo Black of the Supreme Court dug it out of history’s dustbin in 1947. It then slowly worked its way into the American lexicon and American life, helping to subtly mold the way we think about religion in society. To conservative Christians, there is no separation of church and state, and there never was. The concept, they say, is a modern secular fiction. There is no legal justification, therefore, for disallowing crucifixes in government buildings or school prayer.

Read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=all

Thomas was responding to a question about the Court’s review of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law.  His quote echoes former Justice Felix Frankfurter (who happened to have been the president of the ACLU before his court days).  Here is Frankfurter’s quote:

“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution, and not what we have said about it.”  — Felix Frankfurter, Graves v. New York, 306 US 466 (1939)

Here is an audio clip of Justice Thomas’ remarks:

Here are a few more quotes to chew on:

“[I]n the lapse of [time], changes have taken place which in particular passages … obscure the sense of the original … [and] present wrong signification or false ideas. Whenever words are understood in a sense different from that which they had when introduced …. mistakes may be very injurious.” Noah Webster in Preface of the Webster Bible

“Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally.”  — Thomas Jefferson

“On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”  — Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p322.

“The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is, to construe them according to the sense of the terms, and the intentions of the parties.” Justice Joseph Story, III Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §400 (1883) at p383

Please RSVP by contacting Retired Judge Darrell White or Jason Stern at the office or by emailing us through the website.  Breakfast will be served.

Ever wonder what the phrase the “Pursuit of Happiness” meant in the U.S. Constitution? Well here’s a hint from the Massachusetts Constitution. Remember, John and Samual Adams were two of the three framers. Hence, what they did in Massachusetts in 1780 gives us real insight into what the framers meant in 1776:

“Art. III. As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of the public instructions in piety, religion, and morality: Therefore, To … See Morepromote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies-politic or religious societies to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.”

“There was a time in U.S. history when American school children began each day with public prayer. The entire class prayed together. That is now “illegal.” This is why:

• The Supreme Court first ruled against public school prayer in the 1962 case of Engle v. Vitale. The decision struck down a New York State law that required public schools to begin the school day either with Bible reading or recitation of a specially-written, nondenominational prayer.

• One year later, in Engle v. Vitale (1963), the Supreme Court struck down voluntary Bible readings and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools.

1. In this context, our kids can no longer pray in public. There have been many ensuing court cases over the liberty to engage in public prayer:

“U.S. Supreme Court rules, 6-3, that prayer before football games in Texas is unconstitutional,”

http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=12727

“School Faces Big Legal Fees In Prayer Lawsuit.”

http://paganwiccan.about.com/b/2009/06/23/school-faces-big-legal-fees-in-prayer-lawsuit.htm

“Florida school officials in prayer case could get jail time.”

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/17/florida.school.prayer/index.html?iref=newssearch

“School district faces second lawsuit over prayer”

http://www.srpressgazette.com/articles/school-9300-district-second.html

2. There have been multiple court cases against students who have or open Bibles:

“Lawsuit claims students not allowed to carry Bibles” http://www.adherents.com/misc/school_houston.html

“Bible study banned on playgrounds”

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44223

“Gideons Forbidden From Distributing Bibles at School”

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/08/gideons_forbidd.html

“Bibles Banned in Bible Belt”

http://www.foxnewsradio.com/2010/01/06/bibles-banned-in-bible-belt/#ixzz0de1D4mmO

“Bible Banned From School Football Field”

http://news.aol.com/article/bible-verses-banned-from-lakeview-fort/700655

“High School Cheerleaders Banned From Using Bible Verses”

http://digg.com/world_news/High_School_Cheerleaders_Banned_From_Using_Bible_Verses

“The Bible Banned at a New Jersey School” http://smartgirlpolitics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bible-banned-at-a-new

“Bibles banned at Stigler Oklahoma library”

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=635514

3. Display the Ten Commandments in a public place, and you could end up in court.

“U.S. Government bans Ten Commandments from Public Places”

http://theratzingerforum.yuku.com/topic/1011/t/U-S-Government-bans-Ten-Commandments-from-Public-Places.html

“Ten Commandments monument moved. New poll says Americans disapprove of federal court order.”

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/27/ten.commandments/

“Ninth Circuit Sued For Displaying Ten Commandments”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×1222468

“Chief Justice Roy Moore removed for acknowledging God–Ten Commandments Inquisition”
http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Christian/RoyMoore_Inquisition.htm

Retired Judges of America is asking judges to return to their Oaths to protect and defend the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land.

“To the security of a free constitution, [knowledge] contributes in various ways – by convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness – cherishing the first, avoiding the last – and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.” – George Washington, First State of the Union Address, January 8, 1790

- “When we consider that this Government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these States; that the States themselves have principal care of our persons, our property, and our reputation, constituting the great field of human concerns, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote.” – Thomas Jefferson, First State of the Union Address, December 8, 1801 

The organization successfully argued on behalf of the legality of a display in a public building in Kentucky that included the Ten Commandments among other historical references.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in the case brought by the ACLU that reversed a lower court’s opinion that said the Ten Commandments were impermissible.

“The Ten Commandments are as much at home in a display about the foundation of law as stars and stripes are to the American flag,” said Mathew Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman. “The Ten Commandments are part of the fabric of our country and helped shape the law. It defies common sense to remove a recognized symbol of law from a court of law.

Read More here.

“Strange to say, the American judges, ever since the organization of the Government, have been the least criticised and least arraigned public officers. On the contrary they have been the most respected and most honored among all the dignitaries of America.  We may attribute this strange phenomenon to the fact that the only thing which the American will obey is law and the only thing in which he will know the meaning of obedience is his relation to law.  The judges of the United States and of the several States are thoroughly conscious of their exceptional privileges and immunities; also of their correspondingly great responsibilities as the only interpreters of the law, to whom alone the final construction of the law of the land is unreservedly entrusted.

All the American judges realize this. The American people know that the strictest obedience to law is the foundation stone of the strength and permanence of the republic.  This has been understood by the American people ever since they founded their country.  Departure from this common understanding tends to involve national ruin by creating anarchy.  Superficial observers who see but the so called material side of American progress, or those who are devotees of the game of profit, do wrong when they do not appreciate the fundamental proposition that the people are the backbone of progress.

Such superficiality not only fails to grasp the true situation, but also fails to appreciate the true meaning of the beneficent opportunity upon which the Americans build their higher and nobler civilization.  The statements recently made that the American people have changed their allegiance from the great principles which they embodied in the Declaration of Independence to the worship of the almighty dollar, and that the American people have changed from their appreciation of the Bible to the worship of the sword are evidence of the fact that their authors are but shallow students of the America of to day.  

To illustrate the fallacy of such statements:  A few years ago, in Washington, D.C., we happened to enter one of the local churches.  We saw among the younger Sunday school scholars a man holding a Bible in his hand, teaching the tidings from God, a man whose duty it was to settle the disputes of men in the business world, a man whose thirty years judgeship in the Supreme Court has just been celebrated as the pride of Kentucky: Mr. Justice Harlan.  Some time later in Chicago, we happened to come across a local newspaper that reproduced a speech containing this wonderful remark, “Our country of liberty is not a country only for the white race.  Ours is and must be the country of all races,” a speech which was uttered by an American whose legal knowledge it is not necessary for us here to emphasize: Mr. Justice Brewer.  

We are impelled by the force of the facts to recall the tradition about the Pilgrim Fathers who claimed the promise of God to Abraham as the sanction of their voyage. Obedient to the divine command they forsook their country. On the morning they were to set sail from the harbor of Delft Haven, the Pilgrim Fathers formed a solemn procession. Reverend Robinson, having a Bible in his hand, then told them that more truth and light were yet to break out of God’s word.  “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee and I will make thee a great nation and in thee shall all families and nations of the earth be blessed.”  These are but a few examples, and these men are but a few Americans among innumerable others who constitute the America of to day, and who are taking the command of God to Abraham and His promise to the father of the faithful as a pledge vouchsafed unto them and to their children after them.

The Americans do not have to ask God for material treasures.  He has already granted them that in abundance. It is theirs to thank Him for the strength to perpetuate their institutions firm as heaven and earth and to bless all peoples and nations with an example of peace, happiness, and prosperity.  The quickest way to the brotherhood of man demands, as a necessary organization, therefore, not kings or nobles, but wise magistrates whom the people have elected, and who administer equal laws, which the people have framed.

Realization of that brotherhood is in sight for the Palladium of the Republic is in the courts of law.  The statues of the dead and the figures of the living judges on the bench are the ceaseless sources of our gratitude and veneration.  To them we owe the vitalization of the Constitutional provisions.  It is they by whom the Congressional and Executive acts have been made to breathe and the unformed and immaterial phenomena transformed into the living forces comprising the written and material wealth, progress and prosperity of the United States and the various States.

There is not a blot on our body politic to day that the better element of the people could not remove if they resolved to do so.  They will so resolve in good time as they have always done in the past.  There is not a defect or deformity in our political administration that they cannot and will not correct by the peaceful expression of their sober convictions and in the legitimate way pointed out by their free institutions.  

It would be well always to keep in mind this reserved power of the people so immediately connected with the preservation of their Government.  It has been the source of safety in all times past, in peace and in war, and it is to day, and will ever continue to be, the omnipotent power that forbids us to doubt the complete success of free government.  The virtue and intelligence of the people are the sure bulwark of safety for a republic.”