Q. What do you think about the recent happenings down in Montgomery, Ala., regarding Justice Roy Moore and his Ten Commandments' monument?
A. If you took the Constitution as it was originally intended, the judge (Moore) would be quite right to put up the Ten Commandments (monument.) But if you take the Supreme Court's version of the Constitution, it goes against him. The Supreme Court has deformed the Establishment Clause out of all recognition.
How so?
The Establishment Clause - which says that the Congress shall make no establishment of religion - meant what it says: (The Founding Fathers) didn't want the federal government establishing a church that was preferred to all others.
Now there are two reasons for that. One is that they didn't like the idea of an established church. But the other one is that there were already established churches in some of the states - Connecticut is one of them - and they didn't want the federal government interfering with (the state) establishments. That indicates that the Establishment Clause was not the fierce anti-religious weapon it has become in the hands of the Supreme Court.
The best writing on this is a book by (University of Chicago Law Professor) Philip Hamburger, called "Separation of Church and State" (Harvard University Press). He goes into the history of the Establishment Clause in some detail. And it is quite apparent that nobody (at the time the Constitution was drawn up) was talking about the fierce hostility towards religion - or toward any manifestation of religion connected with government. What's happened, really, is due in large part to a later Supreme Court justice, Hugo Black, who played a very sinister role in changing constitutional law on that topic. The 'Cult of the Judge' (Judge Robert Bork's new book)
The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law, and the Rule of Law is an opus based entirely on Natural law- the original philosophy of the Constitutional Framers. Ellis Washington shows how and where America went wrong in separating law from morals, by applying Natural law precepts to a wide variety of contemporary, legal, moral, political, social and philosophical problems. Washington exposes the sophistry of former and current legal and philosophical approaches to the law like: democracy, positive law, utilitarianism, relativism, egalitarianism, secularism, liberalism, feminism, progressivism, pragmatism, materialism; ideas, which have in modern times, proven themselves to be wholly untenable, dangerous and inevitably lead to a corruption of societal morality. He concludes that the only solution to regain public civility and respect for the rule of law is for America to return to the ancient notions of Natural law and the original intent of the Constitutional Framers.
Harvard University Press/Separation of Church and State
AMENDMENT ONE Legal Scholar Says Founding Fathers Back Justice Moore on Ten Commandments