Judicial Review Reconsidered: Cultural Politics, Social Movements, and American Constitutionalism in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925)

In the 1920s, critics of the Catholic Church in the state of Oregon mobilized against the Catholic Church and fought a losing battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision in the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), represents the outcome of one battle in a forgotten culture war in the decade after World War I. The Supreme Court ruled in the case that the U.S. Constitution prohibited states from requiring that children aged 8 to 16 must attend public schools. Pierce would later be cited as precedent in decisions regarding contraception, abortion, and sexual behavior, in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The Pierce case illustrates how partisan coalitions and political movements have influenced the decisions of Supreme Court justices, and how Supreme Court decisions have often had perverse effects, unanticipated by either the successful litigants or the judicial majority.It is a case that deserves retelling because of what it says about judicial behavior and because of how it influenced the evolution of American constitutional interpretation.