Reinventing Civil Liberties: Religious Groups, Organized Litigation, and the Rights Revolution Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the twentieth-century reach of civil rights owes much to a religious group, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Beginning with the First World War, Jehovah's Witnesses carried out acts of civil disobedience, calculated to inspire court cases. Insisting on their rights to publish their religious opinions (which predicted an imminent Armageddon and condemned other religious groups), to proselytize in public, and to refuse to salute the flag, the group asserted that the rights to publish and to preach were inseparable from their First Amendment right to believe. "Judge" Joseph Rutherford, the group's leader and a lawyer himself, concluded that the best remedy was to bring "test cases" in the courts. The Jehovah's Witnesses adopted a strategy of civil disobedience and litigation which would be implemented widely later in the twentieth century. This dissertation argues that Jehovah's Witnesses were, in fact, pioneers of the twentieth century "rights revolution."

While historians have acknowledged that the Jehovah's Witness Supreme Court cases in the 1930s and 1940s were key to the expansion of religious liberty, neither the intentionality of this legal strategy, nor its linking of freedoms of speech, press and religion, have previously been made clear. Recognition of the strategic litigation implemented by Jehovah's Witnesses calls into question the broader story of civil rights in America. The religious liberty cases pursued by the Jehovah's Witnesses were critical to the protection of other civil rights. The converging strategies of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the ACLU, and other groups demonstrate that religious liberty, far from being an afterthought, was integral to the twentieth century transformation of civil rights.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction: Reinventing Civil Liberties 1

Chapter 1: The First World War and the Birth of Civil Liberties 32

Chapter 2: Judge Rutherford and the Origins of a Legal Strategy 83

Chapter 3: Defending Civil Liberties: The Streets and the Courts 133

Chapter 4: Legal Strategy: The Involvement of the ACLU 178

Chapter 5: Civil Liberties as a Federal Question 233

Chapter 6: Religious Liberty and the Long Civil Rights Movement 285

Conclusion 337

Appendix I: Cases Involving Jehovah's Witnesses Decided by the U.S.

Supreme Court, 1938-1955 353

Appendix II: Select Cases in State and Lower Federal Courts Involving

Jehovah's Witnesses, 1934-1955 362

Appendix III: Additional Cases Filed in the United States Supreme Court,

1938-1955 371 Bibliography 374

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	History
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Law History, United States History, General
Keyword	Jehovah's Witnesses First Amendment church and state civil rights civil liberties Supreme Court Constitution freedom of religion
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Allitt, Patrick, Emory University
Committee Members	Price, Polly, Emory University Holifield, Brooks, Emory University Witte Jr., John, Emory University

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