Analysis Of The Supreme Court Case: Welsh Vs. United States

Welsh vs. United States

The Supreme Court case I will be writing about is Welsh vs. United States. Elliot Ashton Welsh II was directed by Selective Service to go to physical examination on March 27, 1964. Welsh filed a conscientious objector status form which meant he was requesting to be exempt from the war. On the form, he crossed out the words, “my religious training and,” making the statement state, “by reason of ---- belief, consequently opposed to participation in war in any form,” then he marked no to answer the question of him believing in a Supreme Being and attached a note explaining his personal beliefs. The Court of Appeals did make note of his beliefs being, “beliefs are held with the strength of more traditional religious convictions.”

United States (1965), because of the similarities between the two cases. The end result of the Seeger case was the court not being allowed to define the statement, “religious training and belief,” to mean, “belief in a relation to a Supreme Being.” The court from the Seeger case decided to base future rulings off of a section which states, “A sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption comes within the statutory definition.” The court also made a note for this section which states, “The Section excludes those persons who disavowing religious belief decide on the basis of essentially political, sociological, or economic considerations that war is wrong and that they will have no part of

The case was settled in a liberal 5-3 decision. The decision was that the Court believed Welsh’s belief to have met the test and so he was entitled to conscientious objector status and reversal of his conviction. Mr. Justice White along with the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Stewart were the ones with a dissenting opinion. Here is a small part of their dissenting opinion, “Whether or not § 6(j) is constitutional, Welsh had no First Amendment excuse for refusing to report for induction. If it is contrary to the express will of Congress to exempt Welsh, as I think it is, then there no warrant for saving the religious exemption and the statue by redrafting it in this court to include Welsh and all others like him.” What they mean by this is that by them letting Welsh do this, they will have to do the same for other cases like this as well for they won’t contradict