Reynolds v. United States

Summary

In 1862 Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, making it a crime in the federal territories to marry a second spouse while the first was living. The law was aimed at plural marriage as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah Territory, but was seldom enforced for a decade. In the 1870s church leaders agreed to a test case, and George Reynolds, a secretary in the office of church president Brigham Young and husband of Mary Ann Tuddenham, was indicted for marrying Amelia Jane Schofield. A first conviction was set aside because of a defect in the grand jury; at a second trial in 1875 he was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment at hard labor and a fine of five hundred dollars, and the territorial supreme court affirmed. Of Reynolds's six objections, the religious one mattered most. He proved at trial that his church taught that male members had a duty, when circumstances permitted, to practice plural marriage, and that refusing would bring condemnation in the life to come; he asked that the jury be told to acquit if he had married in obedience to that belief. The trial judge refused. Before the Supreme Court his counsel argued that the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion protects conduct required by sincere faith, and that Congress had no power to punish a religious practice. The government answered that the amendment secures belief and worship but not acts that the law forbids for the good order of society. On 6 January 1879 the Court affirmed. Chief Justice Waite, observing that the Constitution does not define religion, turned to the history of its adoption: the Virginia struggle over religious assessments, Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists describing a wall of separation between church and state. From these he concluded that Congress may not legislate over opinion but may reach actions in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. Because marriage is a civil contract on which society is built, and plural marriage had long been an offence in English and American law, Congress could forbid it in the territories; to excuse it because of religious belief would make each citizen a law unto himself. Waite also upheld the grand jury, the juror rulings, the jury charge and the use of Schofield's earlier testimony, reasoning that an accused who wrongfully keeps a witness away cannot invoke his right of confrontation. Justice Field disagreed only on that evidentiary point. The library text gives Waite's full opinion, without Field's brief separate opinion or the footnotes. Congress followed with the Edmunds Act of 1882 and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. In 1890 church president Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto advising members against plural marriage, and Utah entered the Union in 1896 with a constitution prohibiting it. Its belief-action distinction and its quotation of Jefferson's metaphor are still regularly cited.

Top Lessons

• Belief and conduct

  Waite's central distinction is that government may not touch belief or opinion but may regulate actions. The line gives religious liberty a firm core while preserving the authority of general laws, and it has framed every later debate over religious exemptions.

• History as a dictionary

  Finding no definition of religion in the Constitution, Waite turned to the Virginia controversy of the 1780s and to the words of Madison and Jefferson. The opinion is an early and influential example of the Court using founding-era history to give content to the religion clauses.

• A law unto himself

  The Court reasoned that if religious belief could excuse a violation of law, every citizen could become a law unto himself and government would exist only in name. Reynolds's counsel answered that a guarantee of free exercise means little if it protects only what the law already permits.

• No profit from one's own wrong

  Less famous than the religious holding, the ruling on Schofield's testimony established that a defendant who wrongfully keeps a witness away forfeits his right to confront that witness in person. The principle is still applied in criminal courts.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

In discussing criminal intent, Waite cites the English case Regina v. Wagstaff, in which parents who, from religious conviction, did not call medical help for a sick child were held not guilty of manslaughter, an early judicial reference to religious objections to medical care.