Congess's Constitutionality Authority for the Pledge of Allegiance

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/25/2004 8:38:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
marty.lederman at comcast.net writes:
Does Congress need any specific constitutional authority to "articulat[e]" 
anything?  Need there be an identifiable source of authority for a joint 
resolution?  For a "sense of the Senate" resolution?
            If we now embrace the reality that Congress is a body of 
virtually unlimited police powers, the answer to the above question is certainly no.  
However, I try to impress upon my students that one respectable view of the 
objective purpose of creating a federal government in 1787 and the reason at 
least some people and several recent Court opinions continue to embrace this view 
is that the federal government is a limited government of enumerated powers.  
Consequently, at least according to this (antiquated? naive? unrealistic?) 
conception of congressional powers, the answers to the above questions seems 
inescapably yes.

Bobby

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20040325/18e2d794/attachment.htm