Updegraph

The movement claim that the common law is 'founded upon the Holy Bible' — making biblical authority a structural source of operative American law — is partially supported as 19th-century historical doctrine and foreclosed as modern operative claim

Byron Beers cites 19th-century state court cases — principally Wylly v. Collins, 9 Ga. 223 (1850), Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 Serg. & Rawle 394 (Pa. 1824), and Shover v. State, 10 Ark. 259 (1850) — for the proposition that the common law is 'founded upon the Holy Bible.' The U.S. Supreme Court's Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 43 U.S. 127 (1844), is cited alongside. The cases are real and do contain language treating Christianity as part of the common law. That historical fact is partially supported. The operative modern claim — that biblical authority is a structural source of currently-binding American law — is foreclosed by the post-Everson Establishment Clause line, by the qualified and narrow scope the cited cases actually carve out (Vidal upheld a clergy-excluding charitable bequest, not a Christian-establishment one), and by the doctrinal mainstream of American legal thought since the mid-20th century. The two halves should not be conflated; this finding distinguishes them.