In the late eighteenth century, American law treated oath-taking as an invocation of divine vengeance for sworn falsehoods. Prospective witnesses who did not believe in God or hell were not allowed to testify. But this strict evidentiary rule survived only a few more decades. Gradually at first, and then with growing speed, the theological underpinnings of oath-taking eroded across the United States in the early nineteenth century. The story of this transition, only vaguely appreciated in the current literature, illuminates and weaves together several important strands of nineteenth-century social and legal history. The common-law rule, it turns out, came into escalating conflict with American religion, particularly after a liberal offshoot of Calvinism began rejecting the existence of hell. By prevailing founding-era standards, being unable to testify did not impede or punish the exercise of religion, allowing the rule to survive an initial volley of legal challenges. But as reform efforts mounted, a neutrality-based view of religious liberty and an egalitarian conception of civil privileges began to supplant the earlier constitutional settlement. By the mid-nineteenth century, evidence rules throughout the United States no longer required belief in hell, and almost half of the states allowed atheists to testify. This transition also prompted the first widespread rethinking of American evidence law, shifting its foundational principle from reliance on the inviolability of oaths to confidence in the jury's fact-finding capacity, and laying the groundwork for further liberalization in the 1850s and 1860s that allowed testimony from black witnesses and from interested parties. Moreover, the controversy about religion-based exclusions led to a new understanding that barring testimony from particular minority groups effectively denied those groups the protection of the law.

中文翻译：

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早期美国的见证排斥和宗教自由

在 18 世纪后期，美国法律将宣誓视为对宣誓谎言的神圣复仇的召唤。不相信上帝或地狱的准证人不得作证。但这种严格的证据规则只存在了几十年。19 世纪初，宣誓的神学基础逐渐在美国逐渐消失，然后以越来越快的速度逐渐消失。这一转变的故事，在当前的文献中只是模糊地理解，阐明并编织了 19 世纪社会和法律历史的几条重要线索。事实证明，普通法规则与美国宗教的冲突不断升级，特别是在加尔文主义的自由派分支开始拒绝地狱的存在之后。按照建国时代的主流标准，无法作证并没有阻碍或惩罚宗教活动，使该规则能够在最初的一系列法律挑战中幸存下来。但随着改革努力的推进，基于中立的宗教自由观和平等主义的公民特权概念开始取代早期的宪法解决方案。到 19 世纪中叶，整个美国的证据规则不再要求信仰地狱，几乎一半的州允许无神论者作证。这一转变也促使人们对美国证据法进行了首次广泛的重新思考，将其基本原则从依赖誓言的不可侵犯性转变为对陪审团事实调查能力的信心，并为 1850 年代和 1860 年代的进一步自由化奠定了基础，允许黑人证人和有关各方作证。此外，关于基于宗教的排除的争议导致了一种新的理解，即禁止特定少数群体的证词实际上剥夺了这些群体的法律保护。