Re: Extent of the House's Infallibility

I will respond here instead of where it was originally posted
(soc.religion.bahai) and save the moderators the trouble of rejecting it.

I disagree that the House's infallibility can be compared to the U.S.
Supreme Court's infallibility in the sense that its decision regarding
constitutional law is final.

First, the UHJ is a legislative body.  It does not interpret the Text.  That
function belongs to the Guardian.  The Will and Testament says that both
(the Guardian and the UHJ - with the UHJ being defined as one that has a
Guardian as its appointed member and head) are guided by Baha'u'llah.
Either you believe that or not.  If you don't believe that, then you are not
truly a Baha'i.

As a legislative body, the UHJ is infallible.  Its laws can be changed by
itself when conditions change.  But God guides that Institution.  God does
NOT guide the US Supreme Court-- that is pretty obvious!  They are wrong
about alot of things, including constitutional law.  There may be no remedy
for their wrong, but that does NOT make them right.

Jeffrey

P.S.  For those who have had no legal training, let me just point out that
it was the Supreme Court itself that decided that it was the final arbiter
of constitutional law.  The executive and legislative branches could just as
easily declare themselves to be the final arbiter (and we would have a
constitutional crisis on our hands)  The Supremes  made it up (it is not
stated explicitly in the Constitution) and nobody stopped them.  Just the
same as the Hands made up the idea that they were the head of the Faith.


"Kevin Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
One possible interpretation of infallibility in this context is
institutional, using the US Supreme Court as an analogy. One of the
tasks of the SC is to interpret and apply the US Constitution, which
involves all sorts of complicated issues (original intent, underlying
values, good policy judgment, etc.) It is not uncommon for people who
are unhappy with a particular judgment by the SC to say that they got
it wrong, but as an institutional matter, there is no higher court
empowered to review their rulings. So "what the Constitution requires"
has three different senses: what the ratifiers intended, what someone
today believes it requires (based on their own methodological
commitments) and what the court has actually held. Though each SC
opinion is "final" in an important sense (one is no longer free to
argue in a way that conflicts with the opinion) that does not mean
that it is a mirror of what the ratifiers had in mind. So one possible
interpretation of what "infallible" means is "final" in this sense.
Though the SC can arguably be wrong about what the constitution means,
they are by definition right about what the constitutional law *is*.
Clearly stronger conceptions of infallibility are possible, but this
one has certain advantages, and seems to dovetail with some of Susan's
remarks. I'm not sure that what theory of interpretation we use here
matters so much; this theory seems to provide at least a kind of floor
below which one cannot go.