Monday, February 8, 2010
Demythologizing the Legal History of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the First Amendment
I just came across a really interesting book review published in a 2004 issue of the Quinnipiac Law Review by Allen Rostron titled Demythologizing the Legal History of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the First Amendment. The fact that many of the most important religious liberty decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court have involved the Jehovah's Witnesses as a party is well known to scholars of constitutional law. This review, however, criticizes several recent books on the Jehovah's Witnesses' role in constitutional history, arguing that the books are "idealizing and oversimplifing the events underlying the cases and the issues they raise" through "passionately and unequivocally supporting the Witnesses' side of each and every one of the legal battles." The review definitely makes the case that most of these histories are uncritical, but (perhaps due to space limitations) doesn't satisfactorily present an alternate revisionist account. Still, an interesting thesis that I'd like to see explored further.
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