Out of all the supreme court cases that could have been chosen. The two that was chosen for this report is the Abington School District verses Schempp and West Virginia Board of Education verses Barnette. .
The first case to be discussed is the West Virginia Board of Education verses Barnette. This is one of the earliest cases involving the First Amendment and education, the court rulled in the favor of Barnette that students may not be forced to salute the flag if it violates their religious principles. In doing that it over turned its own decision in an identical case only three years earlier, and demonstrated that, even at its highest and presumable at most levels, constitutional jurisprudence can be fickle. Many of the famous court opinions leave us with a sentence or two that stands out as uncommon wisdom. Barnette, in a way is one of those. Similarly the Supreme court seemed to get the message. On appeal by the government, the court reversed its Gobitis decision and found for Barnette on the basis that the flag pledges constituted expressions of opinion which were protected by the First Amendment the Free Speech Clause. In choosing the free speech clause, the court avoided dealing directly with the reversal if Gobitis, where the appeal had been made on the amendments Free Exercise Clause. Above statist convenience, even when those principles, read as a societal threat. While itself disappointing in the use of the Free Speech clause to support religious principles rather than the Free Exercise Clause, was the last case for a long time to do so. Beginning with a 1963 case, the court sought to carve out certain constitutional exemptions for religious principles. .
Now for the second Supreme Court case is the Abington School District verses Schempp. This case which deals with the issue of prayer and related practices in public school, is essentially a re-run of the Engel verses Vitale from 1962.
