“Why do we have the Fifth Amendment right to protect people from testifying against their own interests? Shouldn’t the law be able to compel us to tell the truth?”

Michelle Oberman, a friend and former Law School classmate of University Law School alum Michael Newdow, recalled Newdow asking these questions in class one day during a lesson on the Bill of Rights.

“He was known for asking questions that tended to derail class, although that was not his intention,” Oberman said.

This habit of questioning the status quo of existing governmental procedures and documents has earned Newdow a reputation as one of the leading activists in the country working to have the words “Under God” expunged from federal documents and declarations like the United States Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Newdow, who graduated from the University’s Law School in 1988, is best known for a lawsuit he filed, which claimed that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional for including the words “Under God.” The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, though Newdow was eventually defeated.

In addition, Newdow is also trying to get the words “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. currency and is working to eliminate the presidential inaugural prayer.

Mike’s mother Roz Newdow said she and her husband didn’t try to persuade their children to take up any specific beliefs. Instead all the members of the family, which she described as Jewish but secular, independently became atheists.

“We’re all atheists,” Roz said. “But it was all their decision.”

But Newdow, who was born in 1953 in New York, claims he was an atheist since he was in the womb.

“I was born an atheist, as we all were,” he said in an interview over the summer. “And I never changed.”

Julie Newdow, Newdow's younger sister, said the family never overtly discussed their religious beliefs among one another until her brother’s court cases started.

But Newdow’s work to reform governmental language as it pertains to religion doesn’t stem so much from his religious convictions as it does from his passion for law, said Oberman, now a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

Newdow’s fervor to preserve the foundations of the Bill of Rights has influenced his endeavor to reverse Americans’ standard to “profess and even embrace a God-centered rhetoric in the public sphere,” Oberman said.

“His research shows unequivocal proof of the founders' intention to make this country free from persecution on account of one's personal religious beliefs,” Oberman said.

Newdow developed his passion for the constitution during his time at the University’s Law School. After earning his bachelor’s degree in biology from Brown University in 1974 and his medical degree from the University of California at Los Angeles Medical School in 1978, he decided several years later to pursue his law degree at Michigan.

In his early thirties when he started law school, Newdow was older than most students at the University. Employing his medical background, he worked as a locum tenens ER physician — a physician who substitutes for other physicians — at various hospitals in Michigan during his time as a law student.

While in Ann Arbor, Newdow also grew to have a close friendship with his professor, Peter Westen.

The two — who still keep in touch today — would meet during office hours to talk about class material, though their discussions often meandered beyond the course subject matter.

“He has maybe the most eager-to-learn mind than anyone I know, and it’s certainly one of his best qualities,” Weston said. “He always wants to learn.”

Julie said that, as a kid, Newdow would study the dictionary; simply open the heavy book and learn words he didn’t know. She said he’d also write songs about some of the words, choosing the most obscure vocabulary to fold into the next verse.

“He was always just in another stratosphere, another world,” Julie said.