Wednesday, March 02, 2005
OK, I'm gonna call this one.
No ten commandments on the statehouse lawn.
Roll the stone away.
Possible dissents from Scalia, Thomas, C.J., and Kennedy is who knows where, but there's a solid 5. They get it. What's more, they are going to do it in a way that lets us know "under god" will be upheld as ok.
Scalia's vote is unclear. He's been the most pro- commandments at oral argument, but:
He believes the ten c. are religious in nature, deeply so. This is not Santa Clause on the court house lawn. He is a Catholic; the versions being litigated are Protestant.
I can't sort out how he feels about the incorporation doctrine - he sometimes claims not to believe in substantive due process, and the incorporation of the establishment clause is all about substantive due process, unless he's going to ground it in privileges and immuntiies, which would be odd. But maybe the subsantive due process he doesn't believe in is only the unincorporporated kind. He'll write seperately, and be angry at somebody.
cartoon
At a few points during two hours of arguments and questions in the two cases, the justices and the lawyers mentioned the Ten Commandments displays above their heads -- one showing Moses with a tablet of Hebrew writing, the other tablets with 10 Roman numerals.
There's a key difference - the Supreme Court's version is in hebrew, or just the numbers 1-10, rather than a protestant version.
No ten commandments on the statehouse lawn.
Roll the stone away.
Possible dissents from Scalia, Thomas, C.J., and Kennedy is who knows where, but there's a solid 5. They get it. What's more, they are going to do it in a way that lets us know "under god" will be upheld as ok.
Scalia's vote is unclear. He's been the most pro- commandments at oral argument, but:
He believes the ten c. are religious in nature, deeply so. This is not Santa Clause on the court house lawn. He is a Catholic; the versions being litigated are Protestant.
I can't sort out how he feels about the incorporation doctrine - he sometimes claims not to believe in substantive due process, and the incorporation of the establishment clause is all about substantive due process, unless he's going to ground it in privileges and immuntiies, which would be odd. But maybe the subsantive due process he doesn't believe in is only the unincorporporated kind. He'll write seperately, and be angry at somebody.
cartoon
At a few points during two hours of arguments and questions in the two cases, the justices and the lawyers mentioned the Ten Commandments displays above their heads -- one showing Moses with a tablet of Hebrew writing, the other tablets with 10 Roman numerals.
There's a key difference - the Supreme Court's version is in hebrew, or just the numbers 1-10, rather than a protestant version.
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