A Supreme Cop-Out

How do you say Supreme Court of the United States in French? What is the Spanish word for SCOTUS?

Faced with a question that goes to the heart of the meaning of the First Amendment's establishment clause, a case that goes to the root cause of the cultural divide in America, and a case that couldn't more clearly exemplify the reason the supreme court was created, the justices turned tail and ran. They found a minor technicality and voted unanimously to do nothing.

The case is Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, or as most people know it the Pledge of Allegiance case. The issue put before the court, the one they refused to deal with, is what is the meaning of the language "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

For many, this language means exactly what it says. That congress may not establish an official religion of the United States. For others such as Michael Newdow this language means that the worlds of government and religion should never meet. That government should make no mention of religion in any form or forum.

I am not a religious man. I belong to no church. I do not believe in God. I am not, however, anti religious. I am not offended by the beliefs of others. A comparison of my values and standards of morality with those taught by most western religions reveals a considerable commonality. The faithful and I diverge most sharply on our view of the source of value and morality. A thorough analysis of this divergence would take a book length post so I'll put that off for now.

What the anti-religious object to in any governmental association with religion is the enforcement of a standard of right and wrong, good and evil. By and large what most religions teach is not moral relativism, but rather a moral absolutism handed down in scripture. Most religion is not about "if it feels good do it" burt about sin and sinners. I understand that I am oversimplifying and generalizing here but it has been my experience that people who will pursue or support the pursuit of a case such as the Newdow case generally do not want to be held accountable to any standard.

It is this split, the divide between moral absolutism and moral relativism that is the core the culture war currently dividing America. This is what the Supreme Court was faced with, and this is what they ducked. In doing so they also failed to do their job in applying and interpreting the Constitution. This is what the Supreme Court does, decide Constitutional issues. In this case they decided not to.

Article Three of the Constitution contains this language (emphasis added)

The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour

Nitpicking their way out of having to make a difficult and controversial decision fails to meet my good behaviour standard. To me, it is intellectual and moral cowardice.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment