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To: general_re
Has he banned other displays?... do you have a link?

The ten commandments are part of three religions, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim so are foundational laws of a good part of the world...

But I have no problem with Hindu and Buddhist foundational laws being add if you want.... but then again how much influence in our cultures did they have?

Lets be realistic all early cultures had a belief in a god or gods and most foundational laws in these cultures had some connection to belief in a god or gods.... Even our days of the week our months of the years have the names of gods

It not about god to me its about trying to erase history .... there are forever intertwined to remove god erases historical fact

But again has he banned other displays?... do you have a link?

76 posted on 08/20/2003 9:54:05 PM PDT by tophat9000
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To: tophat9000
Has he banned other displays?

Gotta read the court decision, grasshopper. Google for "Glassroth v. Moore":

Others have requested that the Chief Justice add additional items to the rotunda, requests that the Chief Justice has denied because the proposed items did not comport with the moral foundation of law theme. Alabama State Representative Alvin Holmes requested the inclusion of a monument containing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a request that the Chief Justice denied. In denying this request, the Chief Justice stated, "The placement of a speech of any man alongside the revealed law of God would tend in consequence to diminish the very purpose of the Ten Commandments monument." Additionally, an atheist group's request to display a sculpture of an atheist symbol--an atom--was denied by the Chief Justice as inconsistent with the rotunda's theme.

A little more, just for the heck of it...

Chief Justice Moore contends that the plaintiffs, and even the United States Supreme Court, have failed to give an appropriate definition of religion; he maintains that an Establishment Clause challenge cannot be resolved with fidelity to the original intent of the framers without adopting a definition of the word "religion" that comports with his understanding of the Establishment Clause.

By the Chief Justice's definition, as stated at trial in reference to his law review article, "religion" means nothing more than "the duties we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging those duties." Hon. Roy S. Moore, Religion in the Public Square, 29 Cumb. L. Rev. 347, 352 (1998/1999). Relying on this definition, the Chief Justice views the Establishment Clause as simply preventing government from establishing the duties one owes to God and the manner of discharging those duties. This understanding, according, to his testimony at trial, "is derived from the Judeo-Christian view of the sovereignty of God, not the Buddhist view of God or the Hindu view of God, or the Taoist view of God, or the secular humanist view of God." Similarly, the Chief Justice has written that, "By leaving religion [seemingly] undefined, the [Supreme] Court has opened the door to the erroneous assumption that, under the Establishment Clause, religion could include Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and whatever might occupy in man's life a place parallel to that filled by God ... In such a case, God and religion are: no longer distinguished in meaning, permitting the First Amendment to be used to exclude the very object it was meant to protect, namely the sovereignty of God over civil government."

In short, his definition of religion would permit the First Amendment to do what he believes it was intended to do: "to protect ... the sovereignty of God over civil government," id., and sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God only.

While the court agrees with the Chief Justice that an understanding of "religion" for First Amendment purposes must constitute more than just the acknowledgment of God, it is not inclined to agree with his semantic distinction between "faith" and "religion." In Webster's Third New International Dictionary 816 (1976), "faith" is defined as "1(a): the act or state of wholeheartedly and steadfastly believing in the existence, power, and benevolence of a supreme being ...; belief and trust in and loyalty to God; (b) (1): an act or attitude of intellectual assent to the traditional doctrines of one's religion; orthodox religious belief." In that dictionary, id. at 1918, "religion" is defined as "1: the personal commitment to and serving of God or a god with worshipful devotion, conduct in accord with divine commands especially as founded in accepted sacred writings or declared by authoritative teachers, a way of life recognized as incumbent on true believers, and typically the relation of oneself to an organized body of believers."

Under these definitions, Muslims, for example, would call Islam both their "faith" (they believe in the existence of a supreme being) and their "religion" (they have a personal commitment to a God). Under the Chief Justice's understanding and definition of religion, however, Islam is not a "religion," even though it clearly prescribes duties owed to the Creator and the manner of discharging those duties, but it is a "faith." Islam is not a religion under the Chief Justice's views because Muslims do not worship the Judeo-Christian God. While Muslims have a personal commitment to a God, they do not have a personal commitment to the God of the founders; or, using the Chief Justice's definition of religion, Muslims owe duties to their creator and have ways of discharging those duties, but they do not owe the same duties to their creator nor do they have the same manner of discharging those duties as the founders. The court cannot accept a definition of religion that would lead to such a conclusion.

Indeed, the Chief Justice's definition of religion proves, if anything, that it is unwise, and even dangerous, to put forth, as a matter of law, one definition of religion under the First Amendment.

The court, for several reasons, rejects the Chief Justice's invitation to define the term "religion." First and foremost, to adopt the Chief Justice's definition of religion would be to reject explicitly the precedent established by a number of Supreme Court cases, from Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 91 L. Ed. 711, 67 S. Ct. 504 (1947), to Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, U.S. 122 S. Ct. 2460 (2002), which would have been decided differently under the Chief Justice's proposed definition. Without cataloguing the many cases that would be resolved differently given the Chief Justice's definition of religion, the court will discuss a number of examples to illustrate this point.

Under the Chief Justice's definition of religion, religious display cases, such as County of Allegheny v. ACLU, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573, 109 S. Ct. 3086 (1989), would be decided differently. In Allegheny, the court found unconstitutional the display of a creche in a government building, id. at 579, 109 S. Ct. at 3093, an outcome that would certainly change if the Establishment Clause prohibited no more than an Establishment of "the duties we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging those duties." School prayer cases, too, such as Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S. Ct. 2479 (1985), or Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 120 S. Ct. 2266 (2000), would be resolved differently. In Wallace, the Court found unconstitutional a statute designed to return voluntary prayer to schools, 472 U.S. at 61, 105 S. Ct. at 2492; in Santa Fe, the Court found unconstitutional a policy of student-led prayer before football games, 530 U.S. at 317, 120 S. Ct. at 2283. Again, under the Chief Justice's limited definition of religion, both of these cases would have been decided differently as voluntary prayers cannot establish "the duties we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging those duties."

By adopting the Chief Justice's definition, then, the court would not only be deciding this case, but would be implicitly overruling a number of Supreme Court cases. This it cannot do: the court is strictly bound by Supreme Court precedent; only that Court has the ability to overturn its previous decisions. See, e.g., Jaffree v. Wallace, 705 F.2d 1526, 1532-33 (11th Cir. 1983) ("Under our form of government and long established law and custom, the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the interpretation of our Constitution and laws; its interpretations may not be disregarded. ... If the Supreme Court errs, no other court may correct it."), aff'd,472 U.S. 38, 105 S. Ct. 2479 (1985); see also Hutto v. Davis, 454 U.S. 370, 375, 70 L. Ed. 2d 556, 102 S. Ct. 703, 706 (1982) ("But unless we wish anarchy to prevail within the federal judicial system, a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be."). Under current Supreme Court precedent, this court simply must decide on which side of the Establishment Clause "barrier," Lemon, 403 U.S. at 614, 91 S. Ct. at 2112, the Chief Justice's installation of the monument falls. It need not, and in fact cannot, accept the Chief Justice's definition of the word "religion" because, by doing so, the court would implicitly overrule a number of Supreme Court decisions.

Second, the court cannot accept the Chief Justice's proposed definition of the word "religion" because it is, simply put, incorrect and religiously offensive. The court cannot accept a definition of religion that does not acknowledge Buddhism or Islam as a religion under the First Amendment, and would in fact directly violate Supreme Court precedent by doing so. See Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 590, 109 S. Ct. at 3099 ("Perhaps in the early days of the Republic these words were understood to protect only the diversity within Christianity, but today they are recognized as guaranteeing religious liberty and equality to 'the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism.'") (quoting Wallace, 472 U.S. at 52, 105 S. Ct. at 2487)


93 posted on 08/20/2003 10:31:15 PM PDT by general_re (A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.)
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