for readers who want to cut straight to the chase:
from pp. 137-138 of the Court's decision:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
Judicial activism is when judges make up law that doesn't exist. Judge Jones followed precedent every step of the way in his jurisprudence; in point of fact he had no choice; to do otherwise would have been an act of the very "judicial activism" for which his detractors have such contempt. The only "activists" in this case were the nutballs on the school board who lied and connived to change the science curriculum to suit their personal religious beliefs and preferences, and the dorks in the anti-Evo PR organizations and law firms who egged them on.
The reality is if they don't want federal judges messy around in public school curriculum then they ought to mad at the school board members who sought out the activist law firm BEFORE they changed the science class policy (without ever seeking any professional scientific advice), which means they were already lining up legal representation BEFORE a lawsuit was ever filed!
In short, the law form was itching for a Federal case on ID, and the Dover School Board was loaded with exactly the sort of dupes they wanted to gen up a case for them.
The judge was right when he said the students and taxpayers of Dover were ill-served by this litigation, and the people to blame for it are the idiots on the Dover school board (who repeatedly lied under oath) and the law firm that conned them into this ill-advised adventure.
placemarker
As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards [Edwards v. Aguillard], which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge:Source: Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.(1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID;This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE's [FTE = the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, the publisher of Pandas] argument that by merely disregarding the words "creation" and "creationism," FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas. In early pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas, the term "creation" was defined as "various forms of life that began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features intact -- fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc," the very same way in which ID is defined in the subsequent published versions.(2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and
(3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards.
The Creationists carefully picked a court fight.
The Creationist witnesses perjured themselves (although trying to excuse perjury by pleading drug addiction.)
The Creationists lost.