A carving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, if that is the only adornment on a courtroom wall, conveys an equivocal unclear and uncertain message, perhaps a respect for Judaism, for religion in general, or for law. It was striking that in Stone the Supreme Court completely ignored the facts which led both the Kentucky legislature and the federal district court to acknowledge the secular importance of the Ten Commandments. This unprecedented rejection of fact by the Court drew sharp criticism from Justice Rehnquist in his dissent:
The Court concludes that the Kentucky statute involved in this case “has no secular legislative purpose,” and that “the preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature.” This even though, as the trial court found, “the General Assembly thought the statute had a secular legislative purpose and specifically said so.” The Court’s summary rejection of a secular purpose articulated by the legislature and confirmed by the State court is without precedent in Establishment Clause jurisprudence. This Court regularly looks to legislative articulations of a statute’s purpose in Establishment Clause cases. The Court rejects the secular purpose articulated by the State because the Decalogue is “undeniably a sacred text.” It is equally undeniable, however, as the elected representatives of Kentucky determined, that the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western World. The trial court also concluded that evidence submitted substantiated this determination.
Certainly the State was permitted to conclude that a document with such secular significance should be placed before its students, with an appropriate statement of the document’s secular import. Almost as amazing as the Court’s claim that the Ten Commandments lacked secular purpose was the Court’s complaint of what would occur if students were to view the Commandments:
If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. The Court therefore concluded:
This is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause. The mere posting of the copies the Establishment Clause prohibits. The Founding Fathers would have disagreed vehemently.
David Barton: He was contemporary. He would pick a coin, everyone had a coin in their pocket.
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