nrbell

Can anyone tell me the meaning of the 1954 act of congress that added the words "under God" to the pledge? Did this act make it illegal for school children to recite any other flag pledges or was the act purely symbolic?

Toto

The 1954 Act only changed the official wording of the pledge. There is separate legislation or practices that call for reciting the pledge in schools. But it would not be illegal to recite the pledge without "under God".

Stephen Maturin

It's symbolic. The federal statute prescribes the wording of the Pledge and includes suggestions for the manner of recitation, but it doesn't contain any mandatory duties or impose any penalties. See 4 U.S.C. sec. 4.

Pledge recitation policy is made at the state and local level. Typically, a state legislature passes a law requiring some sort of "patriotic observance" at the beginning of each public school day and declaring Pledge recitation sufficient to meet that requirement. The details of these "patriotic observances" are left to local school boards. Absent a contrary directive from the state legislature, a school board is free to use the pre-1954 version of the Pledge. As a practical matter, though, that never happens AFAIK.

nogods4me

Since the US government has seen fit to codify the content of the Pledge of Allegiance, reciting anything other than the official pledge, is not really reciting the pledge is it? Just like singing the national anthem with different words is not really singing the anthem. So if a state's laws require recitation of the POA, then they require it with the words "under god" included, as there exists no other official pledge.

Feather

Am I the only one that finds the 1954 law highly questionable as far as Constitutionality goes?

Help me out here--why is this law Constitutionally valid (aside from the fact that it's never been challenged successfully in the SC)? What thought progression allows compatibility between this law and the First Amendment?

Godless Dave

None. Since when does Congress care about the Constitution? That's why we have separation of powers. Of course when a court gets around to declaring it unconstitutional (48 years later) Congress has a fit.

Stephen Maturin

Considering that the 1954 amendment arose in an atmosphere of gibbering anti-commie hysteria, I doubt that much real thought went into it at all. The larger problem, as Godless Dave suggested, is that legislators rarely let constitutional considerations get in the way of doing the politically popular thing. Hell, I once had a state senator tell me he voted for a popular bill that he knew was unconstitutional figuring that the courts would "take care of it" later on. Sure enough, the state supreme court shot down the law a few years later (and, of course, took the political heat). :banghead:

Arguments that the 1954 act is constitutional usually center on statements made by various Supreme Court justices (all in dicta, mind you) suggesting that "under God" doesn't run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

Ab_Normal

Is that where the "ceremonial deism" concept comes from? I've had fun picking on theists with that.

Stephen Maturin

Eugene Rostow, then the dean of Yale Law School, coined the term "ceremonial deism" during a lecture he gave back in 1962. Here's a definition taken from one of those statements that accomodationists cite as support for their claim that the "under God" version of the Pledge is constitutional:

Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 716 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (emphasis added, footnote omitted).

In truth, of course, the whole ceremonial deism idea is a big fat crock. The notion that "under God" has "lost through rote repetition any significant religious content" is belied by the batshit insane tirades that followed the first Newdow decision.

crazyfingers

EXACTLY!