Connecticut bill

[Douglas Laycock]

Thanks, Steve. 

I was one of those people who once attributed "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" to Jefferson.  In belatedly tracking down a footnote, I found an earlier source than Wendell Phillips for the core of the idea, if not the pithy and commonly remembered phrasing. 

"The condition upon which god hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." 

                               John Philpot Curran, Speech upon the Right of Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, July 10, 1790 

This according to Bartlett's 16th edition. 

Quoting Steven Jamar <stevenjamar at gmail.com>:

> Well done, Doug et al.
>
> While the signers of the letter disagree on a topic or two in the 
> area  of religious freedom and constitutional interpretation of the 
> religion  clauses, there is a huge breadth of space over which they 
> and I  suspect nearly all constitutional law experts agree.  This is 
> clearly  one of the easy ones.
>
> Con Law books emphasize boundaries and hard cases.  I regularly try 
> to  draw my students back to thinking about just how much is in fact  
> settled and how clearly constitutional most of the efforts of  
> Congress, the Court, the Executive, and the states in fact are.  
> While  the areas of dispute are oftentimes very important, we can 
> sometimes  (and maybe generally do) exaggerate their importance 
> because they are  the hot issues of the moment.  This bill, the 
> response to it, and  Doug's letter serve to remind us that we agree 
> on much.
>
> They also serve to remind us that even in settled, clear areas,  
> people, whether well-meaning or otherwise, can act improperly and 
> that  indeed the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Wendell 
> Phillips  (1811?84) http://www.bartleby.com/73/1073.html[1] (often 
> attributed to  Thomas Jefferson, though no one has found where he 
> said or wrote it).
>
> Thanks.
>
> Steve
>
> -- 
> Prof. Steven D. Jamar                     vox:  202-806-8017
> Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social  
> Justice http://iipsj.org[2]
> Howard University School of Law           fax:  202-806-8567
> http://iipsj.com/SDJ/[3]
>
> "Nothing that is worth anything can be achieved in a lifetime;  
> therefore we must be saved by hope."
>
> Reinhold Neibuhr
>
>
>
> On Mar 10, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Douglas Laycock wrote:
>
>> Earlier today we discussed a bill in Connecticut to impose  
>> Protestant forms of church governance on the Catholic Church.  The  
>> bill has been pulled and tomorrow's hearing has been cancelled,  
>> apparently due to a flood of calls to legislators.  Church leaders  
>> in Connecticut are not convinced that the issue is fully dead.   
>> Maybe they are right; maybe they are just being cautious.
>>
>> If the link below actually works, you can find there a copy of the  
>> bill, and a copy of a letter that twelve of us sent to the Committee 
>>  Co-Chairs.  We cannot take credit for killing the bill; they  
>> apparently pulled it before our letter was delivered.  I hope we can 
>>  take credit for a good explanation of why it is clearly  
>> unconstitutional.
>>
>> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~laycockd/[4]
>>
>> The breadth of agreement that this one was unconstitutional, which  
>> extends far beyond the signers of this letter, is encouraging.
>>
>> Douglas Laycock
>> Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
>> University of Michigan Law School
>> 625 S. State St.
>> Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
>>  734-647-9713_______________________________________________
>> To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
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>
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

Links:
------
[1] http://www.bartleby.com/73/1073.html
[2] http://iipsj.org/
[3] http://iipsj.com/SDJ/
[4] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~laycockd/
[5] http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
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