The Constitution: The Conscientious Nonbeliever

For Selective Service authorities in New York and Justice Department officials in Washington, Daniel Seeger presented a baffling problem. A New Yorker of draft age, Seeger claimed exemption as a conscientious objector, but he was an unusual sort of c.o. Although raised in a Roman Catholic family (two of his uncles became priests), he was a self-styled agnostic who refused to say he believed in a Supreme Being. The Selective Service Act makes it unmistakably clear that no one is to be exempted from the draft as a c.o. unless he holds to a "belief in a relation to a Supreme Being."

A Year & a Day. Seeger told his draft board that he believes in "goodness and virtue for their own sakes" and opposes war as unethical. Investigators pronounced him sincere in his beliefs, but the draft authorities followed the Justice Department's advice and ruled that, by the letter of the law, he could not be considered a c.o. After that ruling, Seeger was summoned to an Army induction center in New York City. There, one morning in 1960, he went through with the pre-induction physical examination but balked at the swearing-in oath. Tried ia a federal court, he was convicted of refusing to submit to induction and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

Last week in Manhattan, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Seeger's conviction. The draft law's requirement of belief in a Supreme Being, ruled the court, is unconstitutional. The decision leaned heavily on 1961's Torcaso v. Watkins case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared invalid a Maryland law requiring every notary public to take an oath professing belief in the existence of God. Neither the Federal Government nor a state, said the Supreme Court, "can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs."

"A Child of God." Applying the Torcaso doctrine to Seeger's case, the three-judge Court of Appeals panel held that it is unconstitutional for Congress to select belief in a Supreme Being as the criterion of true religion. The term religion, said the court, does not necessarily imply belief in a supernatural power. Today, "commitment to a moral ideal is for many the equivalent of what was historically considered the response to divine commands." The draft law discriminates against those who hold sincere religious beliefs not based upon faith in a Supreme Being. And that discrimination violates the Fifth Amendment, which says that no one shall "be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law."