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‘Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News’Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom
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Shaping of Constitutional Law
The activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses has, in some lands, been a major factor in shaping the law. Every American law student well knows the contribution made by Jehovah’s Witnesses to the defense of civil rights in the United States. Reflecting the extent of this contribution are articles such as the following: “The Debt of Constitutional Law to Jehovah’s Witnesses,” which appeared in the Minnesota Law Review, of March 1944, and, “A Catalyst for the Evolution of Constitutional Law: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Supreme Court,” published in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, in 1987.
Their court cases make up a significant portion of American law relating to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. These cases have done much to preserve the liberties not only of Jehovah’s Witnesses but also of the entire populace. In a speech at Drake University, Irving Dilliard, a well-known author and editor, said: “Like it or not, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have done more to help preserve our freedoms than any other religious group.”
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‘Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News’Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom
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[Box on page 699]
“Service to the Cause of Religious Freedom”
“It would not be fair to dismiss this brief survey of the troubles of Jehovah’s Witnesses with the State without referring to the service to the cause of religious freedom under our Constitution which has been rendered as a result of their persistence. In recent years they have taken the time of the courts more than any other religious group, and they have appeared to the public to be narrow-minded, but they have been true to their conscientious convictions, and as a result the Federal courts have rendered a series of decisions which have secured and broadened the religious-freedom guarantees of American citizens, and have protected and extended their civil liberties. Some thirty-one cases in which they were involved came before the Supreme Court in the five years from 1938 to 1943, and the decisions in these and later cases have greatly advanced the cause of the freedoms of the Bill of Rights in general, and the protection of religious freedom in particular.”—“Church and State in the United States,” by Anson Phelps Stokes, Volume III, 1950, page 546.
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