The Insite - Justice Now: You Be The Judge

J U S T I C E N O W:
You Be the Judge

Here are the results of this poll:

Who was right?
In whose favor do you think the court decided -
Mr. Jafree or the State of Alabama?

#!/usr/bin/perl use CGI; $query = new CGI; ############################################################################## # Survey Version 1.0 # # Copyright 1996 LiveWorld Productions # ############################################################################## # @referers allows forms to be located only on servers which are defined # in this field. This fixes a security hole in the last version which # allowed anyone on any server to use your FormMail script. @referers = ('www.electriceggplant.com','www.theinsite.org','www.heyterra.com','69.9.174.126'); $data_dir = "/home/electric/public_html/theinsite/poll/"; # This is the path to # the directory in which all data files with are located # This directory MUST be set to chmod 777 $data_file = "TIdata01"; # Done ############################################################################# sub print_html { $data_file = shift(@ARGV); $count = 0; @letters = (' ','A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L'); print $query->header; if (-e "$data_dir/$data_file") { open(RESULTS,"$data_dir/$data_file"); while () { if ($#questions == -1) { @questions = split(/\t/, $_); } else { $totals[$_]++; $count++; } } close(RESULTS); # determine the max number of votes $max = 0; for ($ans = 1; $ans <= $#questions; $ans++) { if (@totals[$ans] > $max) {$max = @totals[$ans]} } # draw the graph print "\n"; for ($ans = 1; $ans <= $#questions; $ans++) { $height = $totals[$ans] * 100 / $max; if ($height < 1) {$height = 1} print ""; for ($ans = 1; $ans <= $#questions; $ans++) { print "

@letters[$ans]"; } print "\n
\n"; } print "

\n"; # draw the table print "

\n
Response # of votes % of vote\n"; for ($ans = 1; $ans <= $#questions; $ans++) { $votes = @totals[$ans]; if ($votes < 1) {$votes = 0} $percent = int(($votes * 100 / $count) + .5); print "
@letters[$ans] @questions[$ans-1] $votes $percent%\n"; } print "
Total: $count\n 100%

	Response	# of votes	% of vote\n"; for ($ans = 1; $ans <= $#questions; $ans++) { $votes = @totals[$ans]; if ($votes < 1) {$votes = 0} $percent = int(($votes * 100 / $count) + .5); print "
@letters[$ans]	@questions[$ans-1]	$votes	$percent%\n"; } print "
	Total:	$count\n	100%

\n"; } else { print "No Votes Yet"; } } &print_html;

What happened in court?

The Federal District court voted against Mr. Jafree and in favor of Alabama's state law for a "moment of silence" at the start of the school day. The court said the 1st Amendment which says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." does not prohibit a state from establishing a religion.

Case closed? No! Mr. Jafree appealed to a higher court (Court of Appeals) which reversed the lower court's decision. The Court of Appeals said that Alabama's law was unconstitutional because it didn't respect the separation of Church and State.

Case closed? Not yet! The state of Alabama took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court. There, in 1985, the highest court in the land agreed with the Court of Appeals and struck down the Alabama law calling for a "moment of silence for meditation or prayer." The court said, "No prayer, even if it's just a moment of silence."

How come? The court said the motivation behind "moments of silence or meditation" is religious. People who pass these laws are looking for a way around rulings against religion in public schools. And that's unconstitutional!

Case closed? Case closed!

Added note: Since kids in school have to sit for long periods of time, it might make more sense to start the school day with a "moment of wild and crazy behavior" instead of a "moment of silence"!

Check out other "You be the Judge" Cases:

J U S T I C E
N O W