Flag Day And The Coming Battle Over AI Orthodoxy

Flag Day is about rule of law, which will be crucial in the development of AI

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Every year on June 14, Americans celebrate Flag Day. There are parades, ceremonies, patriotic speeches, and countless displays of the Stars and Stripes. This year, Americans may even watch a UFC event on the south lawn of the White House. Like much of modern life, the holiday is likely to be experienced through social media feeds, search engines, and increasingly through artificial intelligence systems that explain events, summarize debates, and tell us what matters.

Many people worry that AI will take their jobs. Lawyers worry about billable hours. Journalists worry about content creation. Knowledge workers worry about automation. Yet the most important question raised by artificial intelligence may be one that Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson answered more than eighty years ago:

In the United States, who gets to decide what people are allowed to believe?

What Shall Be Orthodox?

That question was at the center of one of the most important constitutional cases in American history. In 1943, during the height of World War II, the Supreme Court decided West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The case involved schoolchildren whose religious beliefs prevented them from saluting the American flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. At a moment when national unity was viewed as essential to the war effort, the government argued that compulsory flag salutes promoted patriotism and social cohesion.

The Court disagreed.

Writing for the majority, Justice Jackson produced one of the most celebrated passages in American jurisprudence. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” he wrote, “it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”

Most discussions of Barnette focus on freedom of speech or religious liberty. Both are important. The deeper lesson, however, is that…

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