Religion, Race, and Dying Declarations: The People v. Chin Mook Sow

This paper offers a close reading of The People v. Chin Mook Sow, an 1876 California murder trial. Chin Mook Sow was one of several cases from the late-19th century in which the “dying declarations” of Chinese laborers were challenged because of their alleged lack of belief in an eternal system of rewards and punishment. The Chin Mook Sow court engaged in an extended inquiry into the content of Chinese religion that ultimately vindicated the victim’s rights. Yet it did so by mobilizing religious and racial logics that worked together to reinforce notions of the Chinese as essentially different. My analysis focuses on what the case reveals about the unfinished project of legal secularism. In wrestling with the implications of proper belief for democratic citizenship, the court's inquiry revealed the theological presuppositions that continued to buttress U.S. law even as it was being stripped of its explicitly religious underpinnings.