JUST IN CASE THERE WAS A DANGER OF SOMEONE TAKING THEM SERIOUSLY...:

Breyer casts decisive vote on religious displays: Justice: Old monuments with Commandments are OK; new displays are not (Tom Curry, 6/27/0-5, MSNBC)

By the barest plurality, the court approved historical exhibits of the Ten Commandments on public property, displays that put the Decalogue in “a museum-like setting,” as Texas attorney general Greg Abbott repeatedly described it when the court heard oral arguments in Van Orden v. Perry on March 2.

Perhaps the best way to look at the cases is through the eyes of Justice Stephen Breyer, the swing vote in the Texas case, in which the court by a 5-4 vote allowed the state of Texas to continue displaying on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin a monument with the Ten Commandments engraved on it.
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As long as the display is pretty old and as long as almost no one has objected to it over the 40 years it has stood on the capitol grounds, then it passes muster, Breyer said.

He did not answer the question of “how old is old?” In other words, how long would a monument engraved with the Decalogue have to have been displayed — 10 years? 15 years? — in order to achieve protected status?

As a result of Monday’s ruling, religious displays will be allowed on state property under a "grandfather clause," as a respectful nod to the past.

A moral message is permissible, said Breyer, and a display of the Ten Commandments does send one.

But in Breyer’s view — and he is the rule-maker by default because he was the deciding vote in this case — the Texas display "conveys a predominantly secular message" and therefore is permissible.

One important factor for Breyer: The Austin Ten Commandments monument was in a park with other historical monuments around it. “The setting does not readily lend itself to meditation or any other religious activity,” Breyer decided.

Hinting at practical political consequences, Breyer also worried that if the court banned long-standing displays of the Ten Commandments, it might spark public outrage, “the very kind of religiously based divisiveness that the Establishment Clause seeks to avoid.”

The obvious question this raises is: exactly what year did the Constitution change? And, applying the same standard to Roe: shouldn't only women born after 1972 have been allowed to get abortions?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2005 3:57 PM