If a city put up a series of latin crosses in front of city hall — say, some simple, others stylized — for the purpose of showing different ways in which the cross has been rendered throughout time — in other words, a display devoted to the artistic rendering of the cross as opposed to its religious nature, that would undoubtedly convey a message of endorsement to a reasonable observer who came across them. The fact that the display was meant only as an art show would not change the message for most people.

Conversely, if the city put up a group of candles in the same place, which were expressly meant to convey a message of worship, hardly anyone would interpret the symbolism as an endorsement of religion, even though that’s how it was intended. The intent is irrelevant if the purpose is to prevent a message of endorsement: the focus has to be on the effect of the display (which is why context is paramount).

The opposite holding would mean that one city could put up the crosses (or the ten commandments) by documenting a non-secular purpose, while a neighboring city whose motives were more secular could not — even if the displays were exactly the same, and even if the message of endorsement was indistinguishable to the reasonable observer. Moreover, as with the second case, once your motives were called into question, you could never fix the problem, because regardless of what the display looked like, your motives would presumably remain the same, or at least subject to challenge.

On the other hand, Scalia’s further comments on the display of the Ten Commandments are wrongheaded. His appeal to majority…

Last I checked, our Constitution draws its powers from the collective will of the states…. not god… and least of all a partiucular deontological religious identity.

Answer: It’s not a prayer, it’s a writ of mandamus.

I’ll use my opinions here as an example… My religious beliefs don’t rely on displaying the ten commandments anywhere. If no courts had ever displayed them, I wouldn’t have noticed. When I see the outrage over such a simple (and arguably secular) display, however, it strikes me as distinctly hostile to Christianity. I think this is the reason most Christians object to the removal… not that they want to convert the masses.

It’s irrelevant to whether the display violates the establishment clause, however. Michael’s argument that displaying the Commandments might elevate them to the level of “The Law” in some people’s eyes is much more relevant. I had never thought of that before.

Scalia needs to take a breath. Government, at least our Government, derives its authority from the People. Whether God plays a part in the People’s lives is up to the individual members. Indeed, the minority should never be tolerant of the majority’s intolerance for other’s beliefs.

The Court was formed to protect the entire population of the United States, not just the majority. Working for the majority is the duty of the political branches. The most important function the judiciary can perform is the protection of the least of us.

Most polling data indicates that abortion is accepted by the majority. Should then the Court continue to uphold Roe based on that data? I doubt your answer would be yes, and I would agree with you.

link to the entire article below

“It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best–and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him–is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration’s current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.

Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton’s flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of “foreign aid”; according to another, he simply said “we forgot.” But as Hamilton’s biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050221&s=allen

Thus saidth Justice Scalia. And, if said statement comes from clearly sectarian commandments, which themselves come in various forms, no problem?

Justice Kennedy once suggested (in Allegheny) that a big permanent Christian cross on top of a gov’t building would be a problem. I don’t think a big granite commandments display — again, there isn’t just one version — is so much better.

The stronger argument is to say that the monuments are an acknowledgment of the history of the rule of law. Wasn’t one of these monuments on display with the Code of Hammurabi? That’s not religious, that’s just history.

As for Justice Thomas, he often wants to take a mulligan on older decisions, but it just won’t happen here. It’s well established that the 14th ammendment applies the Establishment clause to the states.