Centerfield

I thought this comment by the judge was particularly damning: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." The public hypocrisy on the issue was rather astounding.

On the other hand, "Pretenses. Hypocrisy. ... Boy, I've lived with mendacity. Now why can't you live with it? You've got to live with it. There's nothin' to live with but mendacity. Is there?"

Posted by: PatHMV at December 20, 2005 01:15 PM

I'll have to have a scotch tonight just so I can drink a quiet toast to the wisdom of the establishment clause.

"To Judge Jones, for saying 'not on my watch...'"

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2005 01:35 PM

Oh, please! You were going to have a scotch anyway. You just didn't know what you were going to drink to.

Posted by: WHQ at December 20, 2005 01:47 PM

LOL. Make mine a Meyer's & Coke.

Posted by: Tully at December 20, 2005 02:07 PM

Pat's quote sounds familiar: is that from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof? (which is a pretty accurate description of this controversy)

Now where's my freakin' wassail?

Posted by: Blue Jean at December 20, 2005 02:59 PM

And from a Bush Appointee no less, there is hope!

Posted by: Rick DeMent at December 20, 2005 03:25 PM

Carl Zimmer at The Loom has listed some wonderful quotes from the decision. I'm overjoyed at this, but am also biting my nails knowing that somewhere out there a fundamentalist is screaming "Judicial Activism."

Posted by: Ryan Somma at December 20, 2005 04:48 PM

well that's a monkey off our back

Posted by: Marcus at December 20, 2005 04:48 PM

Ding Ding Ding Ding! 10 bonus points to Blue Jean. I knew you would get that one, Jean!

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of the best plays ever, in my opinion. Hypocrisy and mendacity serve crucial roles in lubricating social interactions, the point Big Daddy is making in the quote. (Should you REALLY tell your mother-in-law exactly what you think of her?) But Brick's point is also true, that hypocrisy and mendacity can be very tiresome and damaging. This conflicting dichotomy has far-reaching implications on human nature and our social and political lives.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 20, 2005 05:57 PM

From a larger story on the ruling it appears that the judge commented that he'd be accused of judicial activism. :-)

Posted by: Tully at December 20, 2005 06:19 PM

. I'm overjoyed at this, but am also biting my nails knowing that somewhere out there a fundamentalist is screaming "Judicial Activism."

Well, technically speaking, this is judicial activism.

Posted by: Oberon at December 20, 2005 07:54 PM

Oberon, no it's not. Judicial activism is not properly defined as any ruling which overturns a government action, and no conservative I know of who is concerned with judicial activism defines it as such. Judicial activism is better defined as a court basing its ruling on something other than the text of the constitution or the applicable statutes in order to reach the judge's preferred policy result, rather than the result compelled by the relevant law.

That's not to say whether some ID proponents won't call this particular ruling judicial activism. From my reading of the summaries of the ruling, however, it appears that the judge took great pains to show that the evidence established that the purported secular nature of the ID theory is purely a pretext; that all of those pushing ID and voting for ID were doing so out of religious conviction, not any purely secular motivations. That makes promoting it the establishment of religion. Thus, the judge based his ruling firmly on the 1st Amendment.

Had the judge overturned the Board's policy merely because he thought it was screwy, that would be judicial activism.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 20, 2005 08:13 PM

I was semi-joking.

But if you want to fight about it, this case is the EPITOME of judicial activism. The Dover school board simply required a four-paragraph statement about "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution be read to 9th grade students in biology. So what?

The Constitution DOES NOT SAY that a school can't teach about the possibility of intelligent design. The Constiution merely says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

The reason the First Amendment prohibits establishment of a relgion is that half the states ALREADY had official religtions and didn't want Congress overruling them. But even if you accept the JUDICIAL ACTIVISM that the 14th Amendment magically transposed this Congressional limitation to every state legislature and school board, the Statement is A MILLION MILES SHORT of establishing an official religion. It doesn't even mention God! Only a militant secularist who hates Christmas could find a religion established by the Statement.

Oh, the secular statement was just pretext to put religion into schools? Well it is TOTAL JUDICIAL ACTIVISM for the judge to examine the alleged motives of the Board rather than simply consider the exact words of the Statement.

IN YOUR FACE, YOU JUDICIAL INACTIVIST!!!

;-)

Posted by: Oberon at December 20, 2005 09:24 PM

ROFL, Oberon.

The judge went out of his way to say that schools could teach ID. He just said that in this instance requiring the teaching of it in a science classroom was a violation of seperation.

Great rant! You've got it down cold. Are you running for your state school board? ;-)

Posted by: Tully at December 20, 2005 10:14 PM

Oberon, if you throw in a few profanities, that post would be worthy of Little Green Footballs! lol

Posted by: PatHMV at December 21, 2005 12:04 AM

As a Christian who accepts as a matter of deep faith that man is created in God's image, I am not opposed to studying the potential scientific basis of ID. What bothers me is the agenda at work here. There's a clear attempt to hide the religious aspect of this argument by the pro-ID side, and if you listen to Bill O'Reilly, you'd think that this was just another anti-Christian attack by some activist judge.

Posted by: Rafique Tucker at December 21, 2005 01:49 AM

Seriously though, why should the motives of the school board's members matter?

Posted by: Oberon at December 21, 2005 07:04 AM

Judicial activism is better defined as a court basing its ruling on something other than the text of the constitution or the applicable statutes in order to reach the judge's preferred policy result, rather than the result compelled by the relevant law.

The problem with that definition is that if there's any question as to what the relevant law "compels," it leads to the term "judicial activism" being nothing more than an epithet against whatever ruling the user doesn't like. The definition based on overturning political decisions is objective because whether or not any individual agrees with the merits of a particular decision, it is clear whether the relevant political decision was upheld or overturned.

Posted by: Scott Smith at December 21, 2005 09:24 AM

I think one thing that worked against the school board was its previous history of trying to bring in creationism. It made it easy for the judge to conclude that ID was just another way to dress up religion. Maybe it would have been a more difficult case if the school board had not already compromised itself.

Interestingly enough, the Dover voters had already voted out the school board that adopted the ID statement; since the current school board presumably doesn't favor it, there's not much chance of an appeal of the ruling.

Posted by: Marc at December 21, 2005 09:39 AM

Yep. In this case both the ballot AND the courts applied the relevant standards, both political and legal.

Posted by: Tully at December 21, 2005 10:02 AM

Scott, using the "objective" definition really doesn't help at all, though, because sometimes a law really is unconstitutional, and a judge who refuses to strike it down is not doing his job. Suppose Congress were to pass a law saying "black people cannot vote". A judge who strikes down that law as being a clear violation of the 15th Amendment is not being "activist", he's just doing his job.

Of course there is a great deal of subjectivity in the standard. But that's what the term means, as used by the people who generally started its use. Changing the definition to mean something entirely different won't work.

Oberon, the relevant case law has developed tests for determining whether governmental actions are "pretextual". Thus, the motives are relevant to the analysis. Similar analysis of motive is used, for example, in redistricting cases... was the legislature moved by race or by party identities when drawing those districts? The constitution forbids racial discrimination; sometimes you have to look at the intent of the actor to determine whether it exists.

There is legitimate grounds to complain about some of the Supreme Court's line of cases on religion and schools. Mandating a moment of silence at the beginning of the day, or a prayer at the beginning of a football game, is not exactly the "establishment" of religion. As others point out, the Founders knew exactly what an established state religion was, the Church of England, which one was compelled to attend and pay taxes to. By choosing to outlaw the establishment of religion rather than the mere mention of religion by any government agency, they were making a policy choice which the modern court has overlooked. That's the argument, anyway, and no point to get into it here. As a district court judge, the judge in this case is bound to follow relevant Supreme Court precedent.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 21, 2005 10:52 AM

As a Christian who accepts as a matter of deep faith that man is created in God's image, I am not opposed to studying the potential scientific basis of ID. What bothers me is the agenda at work here. There's a clear attempt to hide the religious aspect of this argument by the pro-ID side, and if you listen to Bill O'Reilly, you'd think that this was just another anti-Christian attack by some activist judge.

Rafique; I'd second that. I guess one of the documents/texts used in getting the ID in had previously used the word "Creationism". The document was revised by solely replacing "creationism" with "Intelligient Design".

I found myself agreeing with a commentary on NPR last night (a professor from ?). In essence he emphasized that "science" and "religion" explore/explain different realms. Having a "designer" doesn't negate evolution.

As an aside I have to say it seemed the judge kinda went out of his way to "dis" the ID side; kinda like "piling on". I know that just gonna piss off some on the other side.

Posted by: c3 at December 21, 2005 03:58 PM

Judicial activism?

From page 137-138 of the written 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.

Remember, the court only held that ID was religion, not science. The court did not hold that the religion behind ID was wrong; although it did hold that evolution said nothing either way about God - which is not what a lot religious people believe.

Posted by: AlanDownunder at December 22, 2005 01:40 AM

Why has this thread attracted such an avalanche of potted meat product? This is the fifteenth I've removed.

Posted by: ThreadPolice at December 22, 2005 09:58 AM

Alan, you're right that a lot of religious people consider the theory of evolution anathema to believe in God, but the judge's comments in that regard are basically in line with Catholic doctrine... science is to explain the material world, faith is to explain the spirtual world. Various popes over the years have made it very clear that the Church has no beef with evolution, and that evolution in fact seems to be a pretty good, solid theory.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 22, 2005 12:54 PM

Sorry folks, but the 20th spam is the death knell. This thread is being closed due to inundation of amorphous meatoid substances.

Posted by: Tully at December 22, 2005 04:45 PM