I think that most people know that passages from the Bible pop up from time to time in judicial opinions. For example, many old common law rules turned on the distinction between acts that were malum in se<\/i> (that is wrong in and of themselves) and malum prohibitum<\/i> (that is wrong simply because they are legally proscribed). The Ten Commandments were regularly used as a touchstone in making this distinction. The question presents itself: What sort of a life \u2013 if any \u2013 has the Book of Mormon led in the pages of the court reporters?
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\nModern references to the Book of Mormon seem to take one of two forms. First, the Book of Mormon is referred to in a pro forma way along with other religious books (generally the Bible and the Koran) to make some subsidiary point, e.g. all religions teach that stealing is wrong, etc. etc. Second, the Book of Mormon appears as a character in inmate litigation. There are a large number of jailhouse lawyers who spend their time cooking up new lawsuits to be filed against prison officials. One of the favorite tactics is for inmates to create syncretic and wildly idiosyncratic religious belief systems that they can then use as the basis of religious discrimination and free exercise claims. Apparently, many of these religious entrepreneurs draw from the Book of Mormon, in addition to the Bible, the Koran, and whatever other scripture they can find in the prison library to create their theologies. These claims almost always lose.<\/p>\n
Modern judicial usage of the Book of Mormon, however, represents progress of sorts. The earliest case I have seen referencing the Book of Mormon is Turner v. Hand<\/i>, 24 F.Cases 355 (C.C.N.J. 1855). The case, which was decided by the Federal Circuit Court for the District of New Jersey (the 19th century equivalent of the federal district court) in 1855, involved a challenge to a will. There are basically two ways of breaking a will. First, you show that the document itself is somehow infirm, e.g. no witnesses, not the testator’s signature, etc. Second, you show that the maker of the will was bonkers, a condition that the law politely refers to as “the absence of testamentary capacity.” In the Turner<\/i> case, the issue was whether or not Mr. Jonathan Meeker was nuts when he executed his will. As evidence of this, the party challenging the will produced testimony that Mr. Meeker . . . you guessed it . . . had been know to actually read<\/i> the Book of Mormon! (The bereaved family was no doubt scandalized.) The court was ultimately not persuaded, but it is worth noting that Mr. Meeker does not appear to have been an actual Mormon. If he had believed<\/i> the Book of Mormon, in addition to simply reading it, then the case may well have come out differently!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think that most people know that passages from the Bible pop up from time to time in judicial opinions. For example, many old common law rules turned on the distinction between acts that were malum in se (that is wrong in and of themselves) and malum prohibitum (that is wrong simply because they are legally proscribed). The Ten Commandments were regularly used as a touchstone in making this distinction. The question presents itself: What sort of a life \u2013 if any \u2013 has the Book of Mormon led in the pages of the court reporters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}