Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Religious Division

Here is Eugene Volokh’s take on the Supreme Court’s Ten Commandments cases. The Court, of course, has split the baby so to speak, ruling, as Peter noted below, that the Kentucky display is unconstitutional while the Texas display is not. Thanks to SCOTUSBLOG.

The opinions joined by Justices Stevens, O’Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer routinely stress that Ten Commandments displays and the like often threaten to produce "religious divisiveness," and that the Establishment Clause should be read as making such divisiveness into a reason for invalidating (at least some) government actions.


But I wonder: What has caused more religious divisiveness in the last 35 years -- (1) government displays or presentations of the Ten Commandments, creches, graduation prayers, and the like, or (2) the Supreme Court’s decisions striking down such actions? My sense is that it’s the latter, and by a lot: All these decisions have caused a tremendous amount of resentment among many (though of course not all) members of the more intensely religious denominations. And the resentment has been aimed not just at the Justices but at what many people see as secular elites defined by their attitudes on religious matter. The resentment is thus a form of religious division, and I’ve seen more evidence of that than I have of religious division caused simply (i.e., setting aside the litigation-caused division) by the presence of Ten Commandments displays, creches, or even graduation prayers.


Isn’t there something strange about a jurisprudence that in seeking to avoid a problem (religious divisveness) causes more of the same problem, repeatedly, foreseeably, and, as best I can tell, with no end in sight?

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