“I am so impressed with the great work you are doing! You have a powerful team working with you. America needs you more than ever.  You give me hope!”
– William J. Federer, Jr.
Speaker and best-selling Author

“More than anything, thank you for the Harlan Bible. Our nine judges all thank you for your kindness and your effort!”
– Judge Harmon Drew, Jr.
Louisiana 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal

“I appreciate your efforts to restore some morality in our courts.”
– Retired Judge William N. Knight
31^st Judicial District Court of Louisiana

“The judges are already tracking down their predecessors to have each one sign the Bible you presented in the tradition of the Supreme Court. Thanks again!”
–Retired Judge Tim Taft
Texas First Court of Appeals

What Supreme Court Justices are saying about the Harlan Bible:

“It was a thrilling moment when I signed my name in the Bible which…contains the signatures of all the Justices for the past 100 years. Thank you for sending your article…. I found it inspiring. 
–Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

“I read with special interest your account of the first Justice Harlan and his Bible.… Thank you for an engaging pause in the day’s occupations.”
—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Click here to join American Judicial Alliance

John Jay, who died MAY 17, 1829.

A member of the Continental Congress, even serving as its president, John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris with Franklin and Adams, ending the Revolutionary War.

Jay helped ratify the Constitution by writing the Federalist Papers with Madison and Hamilton.

In 1777, John Jay told an Ulster County Grand Jury:

“The Americans are the first people whom Heaven has favoured with an opportunity of…choosing the forms of government under which they should live.”

To the New York Convention, December 23, 1776, John Jay said:

“When you have done all things, then rely upon the good Providence of Almighty God for success, in full confidence that without his blessings, all our efforts will inevitably fail.”

Jay continued:

“The Holy Gospels are yet to be preached to these western regions, and we have the highest reason to believe that the Almighty will not suffer slavery and the gospel to go hand in hand. It cannot, it will not be.”

On May 17, 1829, as he was dying, John Jay was asked if he had any last words for his children.

He replied: “They have the Book.”

You can read the full article, “Historical Significance of a Kentucky Colonel Named Harlan,” as published in the Baton Rouge Bar Journal by clicking here.

Here are a few of these interesting letters:

Click to read Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Letter

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Click to read Clarence Thomas Letter

Clarence Thomas Letter

Click to read Samuel Alito’s Letter 

Samuel Alito Letter

Thomas was responding to a question about the Court’s review of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law.  His quote echoes former Justice Felix Frankfurter (who happened to have been the president of the ACLU before his court days).  Here is Frankfurter’s quote:

“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution, and not what we have said about it.”  — Felix Frankfurter, Graves v. New York, 306 US 466 (1939)

Here is an audio clip of Justice Thomas’ remarks:

Here are a few more quotes to chew on:

“[I]n the lapse of [time], changes have taken place which in particular passages … obscure the sense of the original … [and] present wrong signification or false ideas. Whenever words are understood in a sense different from that which they had when introduced …. mistakes may be very injurious.” Noah Webster in Preface of the Webster Bible

“Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally.”  — Thomas Jefferson

“On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”  — Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p322.

“The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is, to construe them according to the sense of the terms, and the intentions of the parties.” Justice Joseph Story, III Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §400 (1883) at p383

The organization successfully argued on behalf of the legality of a display in a public building in Kentucky that included the Ten Commandments among other historical references.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in the case brought by the ACLU that reversed a lower court’s opinion that said the Ten Commandments were impermissible.

“The Ten Commandments are as much at home in a display about the foundation of law as stars and stripes are to the American flag,” said Mathew Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman. “The Ten Commandments are part of the fabric of our country and helped shape the law. It defies common sense to remove a recognized symbol of law from a court of law.

Read More here.

“Strange to say, the American judges, ever since the organization of the Government, have been the least criticised and least arraigned public officers. On the contrary they have been the most respected and most honored among all the dignitaries of America.  We may attribute this strange phenomenon to the fact that the only thing which the American will obey is law and the only thing in which he will know the meaning of obedience is his relation to law.  The judges of the United States and of the several States are thoroughly conscious of their exceptional privileges and immunities; also of their correspondingly great responsibilities as the only interpreters of the law, to whom alone the final construction of the law of the land is unreservedly entrusted.

All the American judges realize this. The American people know that the strictest obedience to law is the foundation stone of the strength and permanence of the republic.  This has been understood by the American people ever since they founded their country.  Departure from this common understanding tends to involve national ruin by creating anarchy.  Superficial observers who see but the so called material side of American progress, or those who are devotees of the game of profit, do wrong when they do not appreciate the fundamental proposition that the people are the backbone of progress.

Such superficiality not only fails to grasp the true situation, but also fails to appreciate the true meaning of the beneficent opportunity upon which the Americans build their higher and nobler civilization.  The statements recently made that the American people have changed their allegiance from the great principles which they embodied in the Declaration of Independence to the worship of the almighty dollar, and that the American people have changed from their appreciation of the Bible to the worship of the sword are evidence of the fact that their authors are but shallow students of the America of to day.  

To illustrate the fallacy of such statements:  A few years ago, in Washington, D.C., we happened to enter one of the local churches.  We saw among the younger Sunday school scholars a man holding a Bible in his hand, teaching the tidings from God, a man whose duty it was to settle the disputes of men in the business world, a man whose thirty years judgeship in the Supreme Court has just been celebrated as the pride of Kentucky: Mr. Justice Harlan.  Some time later in Chicago, we happened to come across a local newspaper that reproduced a speech containing this wonderful remark, “Our country of liberty is not a country only for the white race.  Ours is and must be the country of all races,” a speech which was uttered by an American whose legal knowledge it is not necessary for us here to emphasize: Mr. Justice Brewer.  

We are impelled by the force of the facts to recall the tradition about the Pilgrim Fathers who claimed the promise of God to Abraham as the sanction of their voyage. Obedient to the divine command they forsook their country. On the morning they were to set sail from the harbor of Delft Haven, the Pilgrim Fathers formed a solemn procession. Reverend Robinson, having a Bible in his hand, then told them that more truth and light were yet to break out of God’s word.  “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee and I will make thee a great nation and in thee shall all families and nations of the earth be blessed.”  These are but a few examples, and these men are but a few Americans among innumerable others who constitute the America of to day, and who are taking the command of God to Abraham and His promise to the father of the faithful as a pledge vouchsafed unto them and to their children after them.

The Americans do not have to ask God for material treasures.  He has already granted them that in abundance. It is theirs to thank Him for the strength to perpetuate their institutions firm as heaven and earth and to bless all peoples and nations with an example of peace, happiness, and prosperity.  The quickest way to the brotherhood of man demands, as a necessary organization, therefore, not kings or nobles, but wise magistrates whom the people have elected, and who administer equal laws, which the people have framed.

Realization of that brotherhood is in sight for the Palladium of the Republic is in the courts of law.  The statues of the dead and the figures of the living judges on the bench are the ceaseless sources of our gratitude and veneration.  To them we owe the vitalization of the Constitutional provisions.  It is they by whom the Congressional and Executive acts have been made to breathe and the unformed and immaterial phenomena transformed into the living forces comprising the written and material wealth, progress and prosperity of the United States and the various States.

There is not a blot on our body politic to day that the better element of the people could not remove if they resolved to do so.  They will so resolve in good time as they have always done in the past.  There is not a defect or deformity in our political administration that they cannot and will not correct by the peaceful expression of their sober convictions and in the legitimate way pointed out by their free institutions.  

It would be well always to keep in mind this reserved power of the people so immediately connected with the preservation of their Government.  It has been the source of safety in all times past, in peace and in war, and it is to day, and will ever continue to be, the omnipotent power that forbids us to doubt the complete success of free government.  The virtue and intelligence of the people are the sure bulwark of safety for a republic.”

“Get serious this year. Put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Justice Potter Stewart

Actually, this language is not unlike the New York Board of Regents’ prayer that was nullified in the extraordinary 1962 case of Engle v. Vitale: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on thee, and we beg thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.” Earl Warren’s supreme Court, in derogation of the free exercise clause those justices were sworn to uphold, nullified that prayer. In that case, Potter Stewart (1915-1985), the only justice with prior judicial experience before taking his position on the U.S. supreme Court, filed this dissent:

“A local school board in New York has provided that those pupils who wish to do so may join in a brief prayer at the beginning of each school day, acknowledging their dependence upon God and asking His blessing upon them and upon their parents, their teachers, and their country. The Court today decides that in permitting this brief nondenominational prayer the school board has violated the Constitution of the United States. I think this decision is wrong.

“The Court does not hold, nor could it, that New York has interfered with the free exercise of anybody’s religion. For the state courts have made clear that those who object to reciting the prayer must be entirely free of any compulsion to do so, including any ‘embarrassments and pressures.’ But the Court says that in permitting school children to say this simple prayer, the New York authorities have established ‘an official religion.’

“With all respect, I think the Court has misapplied a great constitutional principle. I cannot see how an ‘official religion’ is established by letting those who want to say a prayer say it. On the contrary, I think that to deny the wish of these school children to join in reciting this prayer is to deny them the opportunity of sharing in the spiritual heritage of our Nation … For we deal not here with the establishment of a state church, which would, of course, be constitutionally impermissible, but with whether school children who want to begin their day by joining in prayer must be prohibited from doing so.

“Moreover, I think that the Court’s task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ‘wall of separation,’ a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

“At the opening of each day’s Session of this Court, we stand while one of our officials invokes the protection of God. Since the days of John Marshall our Crier has said, ‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court.’ Both the Senate and the House of Representatives open their daily sessions with prayer. Each of our Presidents, from George Washington to John F. Kennedy, has upon assuming his Office asked the protection and help of God.

“The Court today says that the state and federal governments are without constitutional power to prescribe any particular form of words to be recited by any group of the American people on any subject touching religion. One of the stanzas of “The Star Spangled Banner,” made our National Anthem by an Act of Congress in 1931, contains these verses:

“Blessed with victory and peace,
may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made
and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must,
when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto,
‘In God is our Trust’”
“In 1954 Congress added these words to the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag: ‘one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’ In 1952, Congress enacted legislation calling upon the President each year to proclaim a National Day of Prayer. Since 1865, the words IN GOD WE TRUST have been impressed on our coins.

“Countless similar examples could be listed, but there is no need to belabor the obvious. It was all summed up by this Court just ten years ago in a single sentence: ‘We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.’

“I do not believe that this Court, or the Congress, or the President, has by the actions and practices I have mentioned established an ‘official religion’ in violation of the Constitution. And I do not believe the State of New York has done so in this case. What each has done has been to recognize and to follow the deeply entrenched and highly cherished spiritual traditions of our Nation – traditions which come down to us from those who almost two hundred years ago avowed their ‘firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence’ when they proclaimed the freedom and independence of this brave new world. I dissent.”