Supreme Court overstepping their boundaries

[scaeagles]

Another "ruling" (actually, a combination of two) that simply astounds me is what they have to say about the 10 commandments being displayed on public property and in court houses. Rule one way or the other, but make a consistent ruling.

Apparently, on public property is OK, but in a courthouse, unless inside the Supreme Court chamber itself, is not OK. The court seems to expect to be able to discover the reason and motivation behind the display. If the display is there because it is a historical document, fine. If the display is there because of a representation of specific religious beliefs, then not fine. Is not a document simply a document and the reader reads into the words what they choose in terms of meaning? How can the court claim to know the intent? So the intent in the Supreme Court building is not religious, so they can keep theirs, but in Tennessee (or Texas - I keep confusing the two cases) it is for religious purposes, so it is not OK?

This court is making some rulings that are worrisome to me. Honestly, I could see arguments on both sides of the ten commandments, so a ruling either way would not have been shocking to me. But to rule as they did......I simply do not understand it.

[Prudence]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Another "ruling" (actually, a combination of two) that simply astounds me is what they have to say about the 10 commandments being displayed on public property and in court houses. Rule one way or the other, but make a consistent ruling.

I think that was Scalia's position. Can't really recall at the moment. I haven't read that decision because that was basically the topic for our law review write-on entry -- the one I read GOBS of case law for and formulated an opinion on and then had surgery and didn't feel like actually writing up. (Oh well. Moot court sounds like more fun anyhow.)

My impression, however, is that this will now help NOT AT ALL sort out an extremely confusing area of case law. I'm sure I didn't read every decision on the subject, but the theme of those I did read was no one (or not enough someone's to make a majority) has the balls to pick a position and say "screw it" to the other side.

Now, I actually wouldn't have complained if they'd said "yes" in some public displays and "no" in all courtrooms (including theirs.) That, to me, would have been more consistent. But excepting their own display seems, to use the technical term, bogus.

(Digression: the hypo we were to write on for the competition involved a town that was displaying, in city hall, as part of a larger display of artifacts from the town's original settlers, a copy of the 10 commandments that had belonged to the town's founder. But then again, I think it's relatively easy to draw a distinction between "historical display of relics of the lives and times of our collective ancestors" and "icon specific to certain religion(s) prominently displayed in the court of law where people are already on edge and the community should really be trying to at least pretend to be impartial.")