Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Newdow again

Vincent Philip Munoz explains how the pronouncements of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens encourage frivolous lawsuits like the one filed by Michael Newdow against prayer at President Bush’s inauguration. Here’s a taste:

Justice O’Connor has opined that the First Amendment prohibits governmental acts that "endorse" religion or cause nonbelievers to feel like "outsiders" in the political community. In 2002, Justice Stevens voted against Cleveland’s school voucher program because it would "increase the risk of religious strife" between people who disagree on religious matters. If this year’s inauguration follows the form of Mr. Bush’s last one and includes invocations delivered by religious ministers, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that it fails Justice O’Connor’s and Justice Stevens’s Establishment Clause tests.


Church-state jurisprudence today is infected by modern-day squeamishness about public expressions of piety. This is a departure from, not the fulfillment of, America’s earliest constitutional traditions. The public recognition of God, in fact, was part of those traditions from the beginning.

Read the whole thing. 

Discussions - 4 Comments

Steven’s pronouncement strikes me as damn near irrelevant. Where is this supposed "strife"? I live in Cleve- land and I haven’t seen it. Anyway, if it does exist, how is that relevant to the menaing of the 1st Amendment. Does the Amendment say "Congress shall not do anything . . . that offends some people."

That’s what I thought.

Newdow is a fame-obsessed publicity hound, and nothing more.

Quite frankly, so is O’Connor.


About Justice O’Connor’s idiotic First Amendment interpretation:

Regimes cannot be upheld if everyone is made to feel equally an "insider." The real world just doesn’t work that way.

See Willmoore Kendall or Richard Weaver
on this.

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