The case in point.

• Jurisdiction: United States

Section 50. The case in point.—In the Supreme Court, certainly as that august tribunal was constituted in the final stages of its most flexible era, when stare decisis was hardly paid lip service,³⁹ citation of the case in point was by no means the last word.

A shining example from my own experience during that period was Girouard v. United States,⁴⁰ the case which held that a conscientious objector was eligible for citizenship. The petitioner, a Seventh Day Adventist, had expressed himself as willing to serve in the armed forces but unwilling to bear arms. As a matter of precedent, his case was ruled, not by that of Rosika Schwimmer,⁴¹ who was a fairly fuzzy-minded, world-brotherhood, there-is-no-sovereignty brand of female pacifist; nor by that of Douglas Macintosh,⁴² who desired to pass on the justness or unjustness of each particular war as it arose, so that he could determine for himself whether to participate; but by that of Marie Bland,⁴³ (argued and decided together with the last preceding), the Canadian nurse who did not object to war but only to bearing arms.

But—the authority of the Bland case, notwithstanding the then recently decided case that sustained a state court's refusal to admit a conscientious...