What Shall Be Orthodox in Polarized Times: Overview and Response to Commentators What Shall Be Orthodox in Polarized Times: Overview and Response to Commentators What Shall Be Orthodox in Polarized Times: Overview and Response to Commentators

Abstract

lf there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. Justice Robert Jackson wrote this celebrated passage in his majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which protected the First Amendment right of Jehovah\u27s Witness children not to participate in a compulsory flag salute in public schools. ln recent years, protests against imposed orthodoxy-usually invoking Barnette-have occurred in a growing number of contexts, often when conservatives resist governmental promotion of public values concerned with equality. Many controversies, like Barnette, concern schools: conflicts over how best to teach U.S. history, civics, and patriotism, and whether state restrictions and mandates on teaching about race, gender, or sexual orientation are unconstitutional. Barnette also features in conservative challenges to state antidiscrimination laws. The children in Barnette, members of a persecuted religious minority, have become the symbol of today\u27s religious and social conservatives, who contend their unpopular dissenting beliefs are threatened by the compelled orthodoxy of hostile majorities