So, in light of this information, the SCOTUS opinion stands unrefuted to this point since it is neither a logical fallicy nor has it been found to be in error by a similarly qualified and extensive study.
Oh
really. You shall have to inform the nation's constitutional scholars, as nobody, including the author of the decision, Justice Brewer himself, considers the American legal system to be based on Christianity based on this decision. By the way, smooth move whoever posted that decision without the name of the case, the justice who wrote it, or even the full text--I guess you were hoping nobody would recognize that the case is
Holy Trinity Church v. United States, a case so unimportant I had to go through three textbooks to find it written by a justice remarkable only for writing very few important decisions for the length of time he spent on the court. Let me start off this rebuttal by linking the WHOLE decision:
Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892)
For those of you unfamiliar with the case,
Trinity involved a labor law that barred foreign workers coming into the United States under contract to work. The dispute arose when the Federal government barred an English minister from coming to the United States to begin preaching at Holy Trinity Church, in New York, using the justifiation that the minister was a foreign worker and that Trinity Church was in violation of the law.
Brewer ruled in favor of the Church, claiming that though the Federal government was acting within the letter of the statute, Congress had not intended to bar preachers from entering the country. First he had to argue that he could indeed rule in favor of
Trinity at all based on this, and in the first part of his decision, he cited a very old English case and a case from New Jersey centered around an 1855 law against breaking down fences. In the former case, the judge stated:
'Acts of parliament are to be so construed as no man that is innocent or free from injury or wrong be, by a literal construction, punished or endangered.'
Lord Coke, Pier Co. v. Hannam, 3 Barn. & Ald. 266, ABBOTT, C. J.
In the latter, the case brought against a man for violating the statute by breaking down a fence that blocked access to his own lands. This is the ruling in that case:
'The act of 1855, in terms, makes the willful opening, breaking down, or injuring of any fences belonging to or in the possession of any other person a misdemeanor. In what sense is the term 'willful' used? In common parlance, 'willful' is used in the sense of 'intentional,' as distinguished from 'accidental' or 'involuntary.' Whatever one does intentionally, he does willfully. Is it used in that sense in this act? Did the legislature intend to make the intentional opening of a fence for the purpose of going upon the land of another indictable, if done by permission or for a lawful purpose?...We cannot suppose such to have been the actual intent. To adopt such a construction would put a stop to the ordinary business of life. The language of the act, if construed literally, evidently leads to an absurd result. If a literal construction of the words of a statute be absurd, the act must be so construed as to avoid the absurdity. The court must restrain the words. The object designed to be reached by the act must limit and control the literal import of the terms and phrases employed.
State v. Clark, N.J. 96, 99
Brewer also cited
U. S. v. Kirby, in which the defendant, Kirby, a local sheriff, was acquitted of obstructing the passage of the mail for arresting a mailman who was wanted for murder. These cases establish that there is a precedent for overturning convictions based on the letter of the law that violate the intent of the law's authors--the spirit, if you will. This is important, because Brewer's infamous "This is a Christian nation" line was part of his reasoning for how he knew Congress didn't mean to exclude preachers.
Brewer analyzed the law based on two things: first, the title of the act itself, and the report of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, which settled the final wording of the act in question before it went up for a floor vote. You can read the decision for yourself--Brewer spends quite a bit of time dealing with this, and determines that by the title of the act and the words of the committee members, "labor" in this case applied only to manual laborers who were coming into the country and displacing unskilled American workers and driving down wages. By this reasoning, Brewer could have allowed any professional into the country under contract to work--doctor, lawyer, professor, accountant, or, yes, a preacher, who does not typically perform manual labor and is usually trained for many years before he enters the workforce.
Now comes the Christian nation part, the ONLY PART of the decision which was cited here. Brewer argues that no law could be interpreted to be against religion because the United States is a Christian nation. He does NOT define whether he means legally or culturally Christian in this case; at any rate, in this part of the ruling, he is speaking in
dicta, which is a fancy-schmancy legal term for shooting his mouth off. His justification for ruling in favor of
Trinity has aleady been delivered--you could delete the entire Christian nation part of the ruling and the result would be identical. "This is a Christian nation" was Justice Brewer's personal opinion--not surprising, since his parents were missionaries, and has exactly zero legal binding force in law, which is perhaps why that part of the ruling has been cited exactly once since then in a majority opinion (
Holy Trinity has been cited a few times, but always as precedent in cases where the justices are making rulings contrary to the letter of the law but within the spirit), and then, too, the justice was speaking in
dicta.
I suppose now you're going to whine something to the effect of "Well, nobody ever overturned it", so let me save you the trouble. First, since it's Justice Brewer's personal opinion and not legally binding to anyone in any way, there's no reason to overturn it--as I've said, it's only even been
cited once (I believe David Souter might have mentioned it in a dissent once, comparing the majority ruling with Brewer's "Christian nation" comments--hardly something to help the fundie case). Second, Brewer himself went a long way towards overturning it just five years later, in
L'Hote and the Methodist Episcopal Church v. City of New Orleans. (I could not, unfortunately, find a full text of this decision online).
The
L'Hote case was in regards to a New Orleans law legalizing prostitution. The co-plaintiff, the Methodist Episcopal Church, sought to overturn the law based on Brewer's decision in
Trinity--the City of New Orleans could not, in a Christian nation, pass an anti-Christian law. L'Hote had made other arguments, specifically that legalized prostitution forced down property values and deprived him of his property without due process of law. Brewer wrote the decision and ruled in favor of New Orleans, claiming that the judiciary had no cause to overrule a city's police power if a statute was designed to protect the health, safety, and/or morals of the citizenry--the loss of property value was not a violation of due process in this case. Brewer simply IGNORED the Methodist Church's argument. Clearly, even if the United States is a Christian nation, in Justice Brewer's opinion, that does not mean that laws offensive to Christians cannot be passed.
