Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Cantwell v. Connecticut
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Cantwell v. Connecticut | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||||||||
| Argued March 29, 1940 Decided May 20, 1940 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| Holding | |||||||||||||||
| The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment is incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. | |||||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes Associate Justices: James Clark McReynolds, Harlan Fiske Stone, Owen Josephus Roberts, Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy |
|||||||||||||||
| Case opinions | |||||||||||||||
| Majority by: Roberts Joined by: unanimous |
|||||||||||||||
| Laws applied | |||||||||||||||
| U.S. Const., amends. I and XIV | |||||||||||||||
Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that incorporated (enforced) the First Amendment's protection of religious free exercise against individual states (as opposed to federal actions).
Contents |
Newton Cantwell and his two sons, Jesse and Russel, were Jehovah's Witnesses who were proselytizing in a heavily-Roman Catholic neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. The Cantwells were going door to door, each with books and pamphlets and a portable phonograph with sets of records. Each record contained a description of one of the books. One such phonograph, called "Enemies", attacked the Catholic religion. When Jesse Cantwell played this phonograph for two men, they became angry. The Cantwells were arrested and charged with inciting a common-law breach of the peace and violating a statute requiring registration of religious solicitors.
The issue presented before the court was whether the state's action in convicting the Cantwells with inciting a breach of the peace and violating the solicitation statute violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
The Court found that the Cantwell's action was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
This case incorporated (enforced) the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause against the states, thereby protecting free exercise of religion from intrusive state action. The Establishment Clause was incorporated seven years later in Everson v. Board of Education (1947).
- List of United States Supreme Court Cases
- Incorporation (Bill of Rights)
- Everson v. Board of Education ()