Barnette, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in his majority opinion overturning the expulsion, ``If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

According to Wineland, one possible way of applying Mach's Principle is to say that if there is a relationship between the mass of a body and its velocity with respect to a frame of reference fixed on other bodies (for instance, the fixed stars of our galaxy), then that mass ought to change as the orientation of its velocity changes with respect to the fixed stars.