e Selective Service Act was repugnant to
the First Amendment as establishing or interfering with religion, by
reason of the exemptions granted ministers of religion, theological
students and members of sects whose tenets exclude the moral right to
engage in war.[63] The opposite aspect of this problem was presented in
Hamilton _v._ Regents.[64] There a California statute requiring all male
students at the State university to take a course in military science
and tactics was assailed by students who claimed that military training
was contrary to the precepts of their religion. This act did not require
military service, nor did it peremptorily command submission to military
training. The obligation to take such training was imposed only as a
condition of attendance at the university. In these circumstances, all
members of the Court concurred in the judgment sustaining the statute.
No such unanimity of opinion prevailed in In re Summers,[65] where the
Court upheld the action of a State Supreme Court in denying a license to
practice law to an applicant who entertained conscientious scruples
against participation in war. The license was withheld on the premise
that a conscientious belief in nonviolence to the extent that the
believer would not use force to prevent wrong, no matter how aggravated,
made it impossible for him to swear in good faith to support the State
Constitution. The Supreme Court held that the State's insistence that an
officer charged with the administration of justice take such an oath and
its interpretation of that oath to require a willingness to perform
military service, did not abridge religious freedom. In a dissenting
opinion in which Justices Douglas, Murphy and Rutledge concurred,
Justice Black said, "I cannot agree that a State can lawfully bar from a
semipublic position a well-qualified man of good character solely
because he entertains a religious belief which might prompt him at some
time in the future to violate a law which has not yet been and may never
be enacted."[66]

Freedom of Speech and Press

THE BLACKSTONIAN BACKGROUND

"The liberty of the press," says Blackstone, "is indeed essential to the
nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous
restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure from
criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to
lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to
destroy the fre