How Supreme is the U.S. Supreme Court?: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 We welcome you in our continued search for clarity on crucial choices. Remember we can make bad choices, we can make better choices, or we can make the best choices. And today we’re going to ask ourselves: how supreme is the United States Supreme Court? How supreme is the United States Supreme Court? We’re going to look at its purpose. Article III, sections one through three of the United States Constitution. All judicial power has been given to the Supreme Court. All legal, all justice has been given into the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. It also says there that the trial of all crimes will be by jury in the state committed, so everyone has a right to a jury trial. Treason conviction has to be on the testimony of two witnesses. That is a Bible statement.

▶ 1:12 The Judiciary Act of 1789: two witnesses, not circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is not a witness. In the Judiciary Act in 1789, Congress gave the Supreme Court power to judge a law or an executive action whether it is constitutional or not. They have that authority. Now you must understand that under the Supreme Court there are 13 circuit courts, and there are 94 district courts. And so the Supreme Court—supreme means the highest in authority—the Supreme Court holds the power of legality in the United States of America and the Constitution

▶ 2:08 that backs it up. Now we’re going to look at some not-too-supreme court landmark reversals. We find here that the Supreme Court made some decision that wasn’t so supreme, like the Fugitive Slave Laws 1789 and 1850, where fugitive slaves—citizens were forced to return the slaves. People that helped runaways would be in prison and jailed and fined, and policemen were rewarded monetarily for capturing them. And then it was reversed by the 14th Amendment. Dred Scott was an ex-slave who was freed and they tried to put him back into slavery, and so he went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said African Americans, both free and slave, could not be citizens.

▶ 3:04 And they defined blacks as a subordinate and inferior class of being, and slaves were property with no rights. Then in 1896—and that also was overthrown by the 14th Amendment—in 1896, equal but separate was approved by the Supreme Court. Blacks could not ride in the same area on the bus, the train; they couldn’t live in the same neighborhood, couldn’t eat in the same restaurants and all that, but they had freedom and they were equal but they were separate. And then we’ll move on—that was reversed, by the way, 60 years later in 1954 by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court approved it; the Supreme Court disapproved it—an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. 1840s: public education came in, tax-supported, and they taught a Protestant

▶ 4:00 morality by way of the Bible, hymns and McGuffey Readers till ten years later the New York board of educators rejected it. In the 1850s in Ohio, the state Supreme Court in 1872 declared that the word “religion” in the Constitution did not mean Christian, and they declared that no Bible reading, no hymns or sectarian exercises were allowed in public schools. In 1875 they tried to pass an amendment to the Constitution—and these were Protestants that presented this amendment—that no tax money could go to support a religious school, a religious sect of any kind. And the reason they did that is the Protestants didn’t like the Catholics at the time. They wanted the Catholics to be in public school to where they could give them the Protestant view of morality. And so they tried to pass this amendment and it barely, barely failed.

▶ 5:14 But it did fail. But a lot of states still picked up the amendment and put it in their state constitution, that no tax money could go to any religious sect. And they used the word “sect,” and that’s an important word, because a sect is a group within a group. And they couldn’t use any tax money for the support of parochial or religious private schools anywhere. And so we have given you some Supreme Court decisions that were not supreme, and we’re going to work more on this school one. And we’re going to find that religious sects are their own worst enemy. The group within religion are really our own worst enemy. For instance, in Wisconsin in 1890,

▶ 6:14 the Catholics had been persecuted by the Protestants—their churches burned, their properties burned, violently and brutally bullied around. And so the Catholics, they went to the Supreme Court and said we don’t want the King James Bible in public schools. All right. And they got the King James Bible out of public schools. They wanted the Catholic Bible in. The Mormons of course want in the Mormon Bible. The Jews wanted the Jewish Bible. So here we are, a group in a group fighting over some non-essential things. Nebraska followed 1903, Kansas 1904, South Dakota, Washington, Louisiana, Iowa. Illinois is in 1910. Then we move up to 1947,

▶ 7:07 when the Supreme Court ruled that the state bill to give public transportation of all students was constitutional and permissible because the reimbursements were given to the parents and not to the schools. And this is where they brought in the statement of separation of church and state. And then in 1962, as you know, and in 1963, the Supreme Court declared that the Bible, prayer, hymns, tax support, any sectarian exercise in public schools was unconstitutional. So they overruled something that had been going on for a long time.

▶ 8:01 But as I said, us religious people are our own worst enemy. Between 1800 and 1920 there were 87 recorded Sabbath closing work law cases. They went to court over whether you could work on the Sabbath or not, and if you could really make a legal agreement on the Sabbath or not, and such ridiculous details. There were 112 church property cases. There were 18 public school prayer and Bible reading cases. There were 15 public aid to religious school cases, and 22 blasphemy cases. And the biggest cases is the Catholics versus the Protestants—they’re carrying their war from Europe over to here in the courts.

▶ 8:57 Some of the issues were plural marriages, Sabbath violations, blasphemies. Remember the Southern Baptist was started because they approved of slavery—so was the Southern Methodist, and so did the Southern Catholics. Most of the southern states were predominantly Catholic or Anglican at that time, and they separated from the northern denominations on the side of slavery. There was also speaking in tongues, once saved you’re all set always saved, don’t salute the flag, you can’t date or marry another person out of your race. And so the courts have all these sectarian issues hitting them. But you need to understand that the Supreme Court approves the Bible in public schools and public places. 1980 court case, Supreme Court case between Stone and Graham.

▶ 10:01 And they quoted out of a previous Supreme Court case in 1963, that the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, used in the study of civilization, used in the study of ethics, Bible morality, used in the study of comparative religion, or such like. The Supreme Court declared that in the 1980 Stone versus Graham Supreme Court case. And they also made a statement from another court case.

▶ 10:57 The statement they made was this, and it’s very important for us to understand: the state may not establish a religion of secularism in the sense of favorably opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe in a religion. This is the Supreme Court, the highest court, the highest authority in America over legal issues, speaking. And in that 1980 court case they confirmed that the Bible has approval to be studied and taught in public school and in public places

▶ 11:53 on the subject of history and on the subject of ethics or morality. But like African Americans with their free and equal but separate issue—the Supreme Court said they were free and equal but separate—the Bible is allowed by the Supreme Court but the Supreme Court still separates it, and it must be integrated back into the public school system if it is the high authority in the land. All Catholics, Protestants, Jews and humanists and their followers: will you agree with the Supreme Court and unite and teach America to turn back to Bible morality? The destructive facts of immoral behavior are shouting out: America,

▶ 12:50 get back to Bible morality. Save people, especially children, from preventable deaths and preventable harms, because the Supreme Court agrees that Bible morality ethics can be taught publicly and in public schools.