Word: torcaso
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...traced to the fact that the U.S. Constitution forbids religious test oaths for any public official. Maryland's constitution does the same-but it also orders officials to declare "belief in the existence of God." In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld Maryland Notary Public Roy R. Torcaso, who refused to sign such a declaration because he was an atheist. The religious requirement, said the court, "unconstitutionally invades freedom of belief and religion...
...until this fall did the Maryland Court of Appeals finally bow to the "inevitable result" of the 1961 Torcaso decision. Then it bowed with a vengeance. The court reversed the murder conviction of a Buddhist named Lidge Schowgurow, who claimed that he had been denied equal protection while on trial for killing his wife (TIME, Oct. 22). Since Buddhists do not believe in God, he argued that members of his faith were automatically excluded from his jury. Even though no Buddhist would-be jurors were involved, the court upheld Schowgurow and voided the "belief in God" requirement for jurors throughout...
Last week in Manhattan, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Seeger's conviction. The draft law's requirement of belief in a Supreme Being, ruled the court, is unconstitutional. The decision leaned heavily on 1961's Torcaso v. Watkins case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared invalid a Maryland law requiring every notary public to take an oath professing belief in the existence of God. Neither the Federal Government nor a state, said the Supreme Court, "can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions...
...Child of God." Applying the Torcaso doctrine to Seeger's case, the three-judge Court of Appeals panel held that it is unconstitutional for Congress to select belief in a Supreme Being as the criterion of true religion. The term religion, said the court, does not necessarily imply belief in a supernatural power. Today, "commitment to a moral ideal is for many the equivalent of what was historically considered the response to divine commands." The draft law discriminates against those who hold sincere religious beliefs not based upon faith in a Supreme Being. And that discrimination violates the Fifth...
During the two years' waiting, says Roy Torcaso, he has got three antagonistic phone calls-one calling him a "dirty Communist," another an "atheistic bum." the third insulting his wife. Overbalancing that, he says, he has received "tremendously overwhelming support" from all over the U.S. and Canada...