Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.
For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.
During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.
When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.
“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”
Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.
It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”
Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.
In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop, which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.
Why do you limit it to those two choices? As this case has amply demonstrated, science teachers and students expecting to get a real education in science have a big part in the decision to keep agenda driven theologists from forcing their own peculiar beliefs into science class.
There is. It's called the 14th amendment.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Wow, are *you* confused. No, that's not what the courts have ruled. They have ruled that schools can teach *about* religion, but can not *advocate* a religion in any way.
The present decision which the Darwinists are all celebrating is based on the principle that no Christianity is allowed in the schools at all, not even on the football field.
Nonsense.
Second, the sharp distinction between religion and science is artificial. If God exists, then arbitrarily ruling out all discussion of that fact hardly contributes to teaching the truth.
Which God? And what did He do, and what does He want? And how can you be sure that one (or more) God(s) actually do exist? Therein lies the rub.
Religion and science have their separate areas, but Christianity traditionally believes that there can be no contradiction between true religion and true science.
Tell that to the rabidly anti-evolution creationists...
Darwinists, of course, although they will pretend otherwise, are basically atheists.
Thanks for sharing your stupidity with us. No, actually, the *majority* of American "Darwinists" are Christians.
I'm not talking about partial evolution within species, which is really not controversial. I'm talking about Darwin's General Theory of Evolution, which was his only real "contribution."
ROFL! There's no such thing as the "General Theory of Evolution". You're clearly confusing Einstein's General Theory of Relativity with biology.
The general theory is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, and frankly, the accumulation of evidence over 150 years argues persuasively that it is false.
LOL!!! Okay... Feel free to share this "accumualate evidence" with us, the stuff that the professional biologists have managed to "overlook" but which you're privy to, that contradicts the conclusions of 99+% of actual biologists. We'll wait.
Be sure that in your reply, you deal with the vast amount of evidence which instead points overwhelmingly to the reality of Darwinian evolution, such as this.
This should be fun -- I await your response.
The only way it can maintain itself is by striking what amounts to a kind of Muslim assertiveness. Darwinism must never be changed and never questioned. It must be taught to children in their formative years, and they must hear nothing to put it into question.
Do even you believe this crap that comes out of your brain? I'm serious -- I'd like an answer to that question, because I'd like to know how anyone could seriously believe such transparent nonsense. "Darwinism" is based on overwhelming evidence and research, has been "questioned" endlessly in science journals and in the public forum (feel free to do so yourself if you wish), has changed in many respects over the past 150 years as new evidence has come to light, etc. So do you actually believe this twaddle you post, or is it just done for some pointless rhetorical purpose?
Prof, I believe I saw a post in another thread where you endorsed vouchers (correct me if I'm wrong).
If you do support vouchers, do you consider them to be aid to the student or aid to the school?
It's all over except for a last round of loud wailing from the miserable dishonest losers who demonstrate their true morals by denigrating one of America's truly great conservative judges.
OK. Do you accept or reject the Nicene Creed?
Aid to the student.
This is *not* an accurate description of modern hypotheses of abiogenesis. Try to learn some science before you attempt to critique it.
But why can't anyone duplicate these chemical reactions in a lab?
For the same reason we can't reproduce the Hawaiian Islands in a lab. The required materials don't fit in a laboratory, and no one is willing to sit down and watch it unfold for a few million years.
Yeah...I think I may have heard of it.
What is interesting is that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is supposed to have incorporated the Bill of Rights against the states. Of course, the Supreme Court only discovered this in 1925 (and, in the case of the First Amendment in 1947)...reversing numerous decisions between the time the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 and 1925.
But, if the intent of the 14th Amendment was to so fundamentally alter the American system of federalism, it seems kind of cryptic to do so with the language..."no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law"...no? I mean, why not something more clear...like, "the first 8 Amendments to this Constitution are hereby made applicable to the states"?
I think that if Courts are going to claim that an Amendment effected such a monumental transformation as having made every state and local law subject to the US Constitution's Bill of Rights, and, in doing so, are relying on such cryptic language...there should be some strong evidence that is what those that ratified the Amendment were trying to do...but, the opposite is true
Professor Charles Fairman wrote a Stanford Law Review article back in 1949 entitled "Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorprate the Bill of Rights", in which he scrupulously analyzed the Congressional debates and the state ratifying conventions (a detailed analysis unrivaled since) and Professor Fairman concluded that there was a mountain of evidence in favor of the argument that those who ratified the 14th Amendment intended to make it applicable to the states...and he contrasted this "mountain of evidence" with "the few stones and pebbles that made up the theory that the 14th Amendment incorporated Amendments 1 to 8.
In the case of the Estalishment Clause, there is almost irrefutable proof that the 14th Amendment did not make it applicable to the states...specifically, the Blaine Amendment of 1875
7 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified...President Grant asks Congressman James Blaine to introduce a proposed amendment, Section 2 of which reads, in its entirety:
No state shall make any law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
The Blaine Amendment (which would have been the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution passes the House but fails in the Senate. Senator Frelinghuysen of NJ, in introducing the amendment in the Senate states:
The [Blaine Amendment] very properly extends the prohibition of the first amendment of the Constitution to the States. Thus the [Blaine Amendment] prohibits the States, for the first time, from the establishment of religion, from prohibiting its free exercise, and from making any religious test a qualification to office.
Senator Eaton of Connecticut, in objecting to the Blaine Amendment states, on the Senate floor:
I am opposed to any State prohibiting the free exercise of any religion; and I do not require the Senate or the Congress of the United States to assist me in taking care of the State of Connecticut in that regard.
Senator Whyte agreed:
The first amendment to the Constitution prevents the establishment of religion by congressional enactment; it prohibits the interference of Congress with the free exercise thereof, and leaves the whole power for the propagation of it with the States exclusively; and so far as I am concerned I propose to leave it there also.
The Congressional record during the debates over the Blaine Amendment shows that not one member of Congress...the majority of whom were in either the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment or one of the state legislatures that ratified it...not a single one...mentioned that the Blaine Amendment was unnecessary...it seems that none of the Congressmen who ratified the 14th Amendment knew that they thereby incorporated the Establishment Clause against the states.
If those that ratified the same Amendment that the Court now tells us "incorporated" the First Amendment against the states...apparently had no intention of or knowledge that they had done so...
Exactly what authority do federal courts have to, on their own initiative, create a new meaning and application of the First Amendment...demonstrably contrary to the meaning and application as intended and understood by those who ratified the Constitution and its amendments?...
None...and 60 years of illegitimate federal interference pursuant to clearly bogus court rulings does not thereby change the Constitution
####Aid to the student.####
Glad to hear that. We agree.
I therefore assume you would not object to students using vouchers to attend a religious school?
ID is/was a sneaky underhanded attempt to force religion into science class by pretending that the Genesis creation story had nothing to do with religion.
Not at all.
Not really...notwithstanding the fiction created by the federal courts for the last 60 years...See my post at 71 to curiosity
You really have no clue as to the actual contents of the Theory of Evolution, do you?
The real issue is not whether ID is science or creationism disguised as science...the real issue is who decides what students are taught...local school boards or federal courts.
What goes in a school in Dover, PA is a purely local issue. The Establishment Clause of the US Constitution has been so perverted since the 1947 Everson case that most people do not know that it applies to Congress and the federal government only. It would matter not one bit if the Dover schools spent an entire semester teaching about birth of Jesus...that is a state and local issue...and the federal government has no authority here. Granted courts, since 1947, have pretended that the First Amendment applies to local schools, towns and states...but it does not....and that is an easily provable fact. Applying the Constitution's prohibition on federal establishment of religion to state and local issues is judicial activism in every sense of the phrase
Please clarify a couple of things for me...
Do you recognize the local people of Dover that brought this suit against the school board to be citizens of the United States? Do you recognize that the Dover School Board operates under authority of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Board of Education? Do you recognize that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was duly ratified and is a legal part of the Constitution?
The 14th Amendment specifically prohibits the states from abridging the Constitutional rights of the individual:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Now are you saying that the 1st Amendment only protects the rights of some people, and others don't get to enjoy this protection?
Maybe - but more people believe "God did it" than believe evolution.
Ooops...should read Professor Fairman concluded that there was a mountain of evidence in favor of the argument that those who ratified the 14th Amendment intended did not intend to make it applicable to the states...
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