Loyalty oaths are a certain type of promise. What is their moral force? Do I by taking an oath thereby bind myself with some (new) moral ties to, say, the State of Finland? When can we speak of an oath as morally binding? These questions constitute the core of the paper. First, I shall give an analysis of promises and promising in general. Secondly, I shall try to analyse the question 'Do we have to keep our promises?' After this I shall consider some differences between standard case promises and loyalty oaths. After this the connection of loyalty oaths to civil liberty will be brought out. Thereafter I shall give a brief presentation of the politically most relevant loyalty oaths in Finland and ask if they can be considered as having any moral force. The paper ends with a few hints on the practical consequences of this analysis.
When the political scientist attempts to assess the state of civil liberties in America following World War II, he confronts a voluminous record of episodes and events. Most of the books, articles, and other documents so far available suggest that the fear of communist subversion carried Americans very far from the spirit, if not the letter, of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, it is possible to conclude that the hysteria associated with the name of Joseph R. McCarthy permeated almost every state, city and hamlet in America, and that McCarthy himself, in the words of Richard H. Rovere, "held two Presidents captive, or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the United States have ever been held …" The political scientist may therefore be persuaded that the label McCarthy Era better fits the Nineteen Fifties than the alternative designation, Eisenhower Era.It may be hoped, however, that his research will not overlook those incidents, however rare, which suggest that fear and suspicion did not entirely dominate the national scene. One such incident, of more than ordinary interest, occurred in Iowa during the early months of 1951. By April, 1951, more than one year had elapsed since the late junior Senator from Wisconsin had produced his famous if elusive "list" of card-carrying communists in the State Department. The Korean War, moving toward the end of its first winter, promoted a mood which was, on the whole, favorable to the Senator's activities. Nevertheless, in April, 1951, the Iowa Senate overwhelmingly rejected a loyalty oath measure which was much less stringent than those that had previously been approved in almost half the states. The action of the Iowa Senate, moreover, was not merely unusual or exceptional in 1951; it appears to be without precedent in recent history. So far as is known, Iowa was the only state in which a loyalty oath measure was defeated by vote in the legislature.
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.
Ohio's 2006 "Patriot Act" requires all potential public employees to answer six questions regarding "material support" for any groups on the U.S. State Department's Terrorist Exclusion List. Answering "yes" to any of these questions automatically precludes public employment with the state of Ohio. Although not supporting terrorist groups seems like a reasonable request for public employees, the oath-taking denies the presumption of innocence that is a cornerstone of American law: if a person fails to swear innocence, they are automatically presumed guilty. This article looks at the history of loyalty oaths in America from the pre-colonial Puritans to the Ohio Patriot Act, & efforts to resist them by groups such as the ACLU. Adapted from the source document.
