John Walton Caughey, Historian and Civil Libertarian

This chapter discusses the origins of the Zobrests’ lawsuit against their public school district in Tucson, which refused on constitutional grounds to pay for Jim’s sign language interpreter in a Catholic school. For the Zobrests, federal disability laws and the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause entitled Jim to have this essential service. What follows is an analysis of the zigzag line of thinking employed by the U.S. Supreme Court as it grappled with church-state issues in the twentieth century prior to its consideration of the Zobrest case. For years, two titans of constitutional law—Catholic neoconservative William Bentley Ball and civil libertarian Leo Pfeffer—battled over what was legally permissible with regard to freedom of religion. Ultimately, the court enunciated a controversial Lemon Test to address this thorny area of its jurisprudence.

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Signing, Sectarian Schools, and the Law

Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252043208.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 121-151

Author(s):

Bruce J. Dierenfield ◽

David A. Gerber

Keyword(s):

Federal District ◽

Catholic School ◽

Establishment Clause ◽

District Court ◽

Parochial School ◽

Court Of Appeals ◽

Government Aid ◽

Sectarian Schools ◽

Civil Libertarian ◽

The U.S

This chapter examines and analyzes the five-year journey of Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993) from the federal district court in Tucson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court. William Bentley Ball, the Zobrests’ attorney, and John Richardson, the school district’s attorney, clashed over whether the Establishment Clause permitted any government aid to a Catholic school. Many religious and civil libertarian groups—but just one national deaf association—filed arguments to sway the court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the majority decision favoring the Zobrests, misunderstood the complicated function of a sign language interpreter to permit what he regarded as incidental parochial school aid. Rehnquist maintained the aid was permissible because the plaintiffs and their deaf son were its main beneficiaries.

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Policing Diversity — Managing Complaints against the Police

The Police Journal Theory Practice and Principles ◽

10.1177/0032258x0207500205 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 75 (2) ◽

pp. 117-135 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Peter C Kennison

Keyword(s):

Public Attitudes ◽

Good Practice ◽

Easy Access ◽

Police Misconduct ◽

Critical Perspective ◽

The Public ◽

Police Accountability ◽

Police Deviance ◽

Civil Libertarian ◽

Police Practices

This study takes a critical perspective in examining public attitudes towards police stop-and-search powers and, more particularly, police misconduct. It shows how police accountability works through the formal and complex system of complaints against police. It shows a system designed to favour the police against the citizen. In the eyes of some citizens this has tended to reduce the legitimacy of the complaints process, which has led to its under use. Certain police practices and services appear to impact more on diverse sections of the public than it does on the white community. It shows how aberrant police behaviour exposes some of the sociological issues such as black over-representation in public dissatisfaction and complaint statistics. The research also highlights the hidden figure of police deviance and misconduct. This study acknowledges future changes in complaints management proposed by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett MP. However, these proposals do not appear to go far enough. The complaints process is beset with a number of significant problems which include inaccessibility, complication and inequality. The study suggests, as the way forward, a model of ‘good practice’ using a pragmatic approach, which is customer-focused and overcomes many of the problems that allow for easy access, simplification and informality. The principle of civil libertarian ideals prevails, satisfying the legal notion, ‘justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done’.

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