Suchergebnisse

According to laws deriving from the constitutional developments of the seventeenth century and earlier, a new monarch of the UK has to swear oaths that renounce Roman Catholicism and uphold protestantism in the UK, presbyterianism in Scotland and the privileged established status of the Church of England. If the next monarchical succession is to be as smooth as the governmental succession of 2010 these anachronistic oaths should be considered for abolition and the whole procedure should be reviewed. There remains then only one oath requiring to be administered at the coronation to which all can agree—to govern according to the law.

Abstract
In this article the argument is made that the rabbinic courtroom oath reflects the influence of Roman law. Despite substantial differences, the rabbinic courtroom oath, like its Roman counterpart, represents, in part, a product of negotiation between the litigants – owed by one party to another; capable of modification at the parties' discretion, and even of forgiveness; comparable to the litigant-driven process of judicial selection – and an arbitration-like tool for dispute resolution.

In Baggett v. Bullitt, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that professors at the University of Washington could not be required to execute two legislatively prescribed "loyalty" oaths. This high-court decision ended a nine-year battle carried on by the University's faculty. It marks a significant step forward in the achievement of constitutional protection for intellectual liberty everywhere. It is now questionable whether the act of swearing one's loyalty, as a condition of academic employment, an act utterly unrelated to academic competence, can constitutionally be required of a professor. Furthermore, the Court's opinion casts a cloud of doubt over the oath laws of twenty-six states which may now be caught in the decision's backwash. The purpose of this article is to set forth a bit of the background, a description, and several of the implications of Washington's loyalty oath case.