The courts and the Bill of Rights.

I am an Americans United member of several years' standing and often read Church & State cover to cover. I want to correct a minor error in one of your editorials in the July/August issue. In "Doubting Thomas: Don't Trust This Justice's Church-State Views," the statement is made that "In 1940, in a case called Cantwell v. Connecticut, the [United States Supreme Court] ... declared that the entire Bill of Rights is binding on the states."

Cantwell was an important case in the history of judicial protection of religious liberty. It may have been the first opinion to come right out and state that all of our First Amendment rights (speech, press, peaceful assembly, religious freedoms, etc.) must be honored by the states. But it does not say that the entire Bill of Rights is binding on the states.

Actually, the Supreme Court has never said that the entire Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) is binding on the states. Over the years, the Court has, through a gradual process called "selective incorporation," held on a case-by-case, right-by-right basis that most of the Bill of Rights is binding on the states. But a few provisions have never been (and may never be) extended to the states. For example, it has never been held that a state may only bring a person to criminal trial following a grand jury indictment, though this pathway must be followed by the federal government.

Apart from this minor glitch, your editorial was right on the money. Justice Clarence Thomas is a brilliant man and quite a scholar on some judicial topics. He's just way off base on church-and-state relations.

Rick Virnig

The Woodlands, Texas