More on the Ten

Rich Lowry writes about the Supreme Court cases i wrote about in the not so distant past. Here are the highlights:

A better question is: If a Ten Commandments display establishes a religion, exactly what religion is it? Is it Judaism? And if so, Orthodox or Reform? Or is it Christianity? If so, Roman Catholic or Protestant? If the latter, is it Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, or something else? Maybe Seventh-day Adventist? If government has gone to the trouble of establishing a religion, shouldn't all of us know which one? Or is this just another case of government's notorious bureaucratic inefficiency? It meant to establish a religion, but memos got crossed somewhere and it couldn't agree on its fundamental tenets?

Indeed, the alleged harm of Ten Commandments displays is attenuated to the point of nonexistence. The Texas case came about because in 2002 a homeless man named Thomas Van Orden — on his way to idling the day away at the State Law Library — noticed the display on the grounds of the Texas state capitol. As it happens, Van Orden has a law degree (is this an over-lawyered country or what?). With nothing else to do with his time, he sued. The display had been up since 1961, and in 40 years, no one in Texas had noticed the state was trying to establish a religion.

The Texas case is dicier, since the display isn't quite so clearly part of a historical statement. Expect tangled 5-4 decisions in the two cases that do little to clarify anything. The Ten Commandments are one of Western culture's great symbols of law. In its arbitrary and erratic jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court has become a symbol of the opposite.

Read the full article here.