Interview of Chief Justice Roy Moore by Thomas R. Eddlem

Determined to preserve the Founders’ vision of God-given rights, Chief Justice Roy Moore has been targeted by Morris Dees and like-minded leftist radicals.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore first attracted national attention as an Alabama state circuit judge in 1995, when the ACLU unsuccessfully sued in an attempt to require the judge to remove from his courtroom a homemade plaque of the Ten Commandments. In 2000, Alabama voters elected Moore chief justice of the state Supreme Court. During the campaign, Moore had pledged to bring the Ten Commandments to the State Supreme Court to conform to the spirit of the Alabama state constitution. That constitution begins with a declaration that "to establish justice … and secure the blessings of liberty," the government will be based upon "invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God." Moore fulfilled his campaign promise by installing a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the court rotunda, and was again sued by plaintiffs represented by agnostic and radical left organizations. On November 18th, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that the marble monument must be removed within 30 days. Judge Moore, who plans to appeal the decision, was interviewed on November 21, 2002.

THE NEW AMERICAN: What prompted you to put the Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse in the first place?

Chief Justice Roy Moore: The Commandments were placed in the court to acknowledge the moral foundation of our law and the foundation of our government.

TNA: Some people might say that they don’t understand the connection between our country’s laws and the Ten Commandments, which were written long before 1776. Where is the connection?

Moore: The connection is in the foundational documents of our country, including the Declaration of Independence. It says in the first sentence that we are founded upon the "Laws of Nature" and "Nature’s God." "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." In those three sentences, you can plainly see that the laws of God give us the right to be a power among the other powers on the Earth and that it was God that gave us our rights æ not government. And government’s only role is to secure our rights for us. And if it should fail to do so, then the Declaration says that "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

The Ten Commandments are the divinely revealed law. In the laws of England — where we get the words "Laws of Nature" and "Nature’s God" — divine law is a direct part of the law of nature. In a very real sense, the Ten Commandments represent the "Laws of Nature" and "Nature’s God" upon which our country was founded. Also, in a deeper sense, the Ten Commandments are the basis of our freedom of conscience, which flows from the first table of the law. The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government’s prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God. Therefore, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" was made part of the First Amendment.

TNA: The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The U.S. Circuit Court in your case ruled that a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama state court building was a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. How exactly do your actions as a state chief justice amount to Congress establishing a national church?

Moore: I know what you are talking about; you are asking about [the First Amendment applying only to] Congress. I understand the debate between those who would say that the 14th Amendment put the strictures of the First Amendment to the states. They fail to recognize the defeat of the Blaine Amendment in Congress in the mid-1800s.* But that is not really the point. The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment. And indeed, it is the right of the states to acknowledge God, as it is the right of the federal government to acknowledge its source of power. The state of Alabama has a specific interest in this, since the first sentence of our constitution says that "to establish justice" we must invoke "the favor and guidance of Almighty God."

Moore: The judge in his own words said that he did not have the expertise to define the word "religion." In fact, in a 79-page opinion he used the word "religion" or "religious" close to 150 times and can’t define the term. He said that I was establishing a religion, and it is very curious as to how a court can say you are doing something when that court can’t even define what you are doing. This is true of many federal courts around the country. They misunderstand the First Amendment.

TNA: Judge Thompson ruled that the Ten Commandments monument is "an obvious effort to proselytize on behalf of a particular religion," but then failed to make clear what religion your monument was proselytizing on behalf of. The written opinion first stated that it proselytized on behalf of your personal religion, though the decision never mentioned the denomination you belong to or defined the creed you affirm. Later the judge stated that it proselytized on behalf of Christianity. Why a reproduction of the Ten Commandments would proselytize on behalf of Christianity alone and not Judaism, when both faiths hold fast to the Ten Commandments, was likewise unexplained. Why was the judge so vague about the establishment of the particular religion this monument would supposedly create?

Moore: The judge was unclear because he can’t define the term "religion." And that’s not only true with this judge, but also with many of the federal courts across our land who seem to think, erroneously, that the acknowledgement of God is synonymous with religion. Indeed, the acknowledgement of God is not synonymous with religion. The definition of the term "religion" — taken from George Mason, James Madison, and the United States Supreme Court — was "the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it," which is your form of worship or articles of faith. The definition of religion is plain in history; it is plain in law; and it is what the federal courts are now disregarding.

TNA: The press made a big deal about how you were, in their words, "sneaking" the monument into the building "in the middle of the night, without telling any of the other justices." Both the press and, to a lesser extent, the circuit court opinion itself seem to imply that you employed great secrecy in placing the monument in the court building rotunda and that you exceeded your legal authority, perhaps even breaking the law in the process.

Moore: That is an absolutely ridiculous argument made to divert attention from the true issue, which is the acknowledgement of God. You can’t sneak a two-and-a-half ton monument into a building without other people knowing about it. Other people in this building knew about it, the administrative office of courts knew about it, the marshals knew about it. And certainly, it was planned [for installation] after work hours, and it went on through the night, without a doubt. The words "sneaking into the building in the middle of the night" are simply a way to divert attention from the true issue. Indeed, it is my duty as lessee of the building to determine what displays are in the building. And it is also my duty under the [Alabama state] constitution to ensure that the administration of justice is carried out. In accordance with our constitution, the establishment of justice depends upon "invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God." I am recognizing the source of our system of justice.

TNA: The federal circuit court opinion makes a lot of hay out of the fact that some people have gathered around the Ten Commandments monument to pray, implying that this prayer has a negative impact on the administration of justice.

Moore: According to Chief Justice John Jay: "The greater part of evidence will always consist of the testimony of witnesses. This testimony is given under those solemn obligations which an appeal to the God of Truth impose; and if oaths should cease to be held sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights would become insecure." So in other words, recognition of a duty we owe to God is a basis of testimony of witnesses. It is altogether proper for people to recognize a sovereign God. Indeed, in Alabama we are sworn in by our oaths "so help me God" as judicial officers, and even witnesses and jurors and grand jurors are sworn in with that oath. To fail to recognize who that God is is not only illogical and ridiculous, it is also detrimental to the court system.

TNA: The three plaintiffs who filed suit to have the monument removed from the courthouse claimed that the Ten Commandments were "offensive" and made each of them feel like an "outsider." With such basic common-sense principles as do not kill, do not steal, and do not bear false witness, what possible objections could they have to the Commandments?

Moore: They object to the main one, which says there is a God. That’s what they don’t like. They don’t want to be reminded that there is an authority higher than the authority of the state. And they don’t like to be reminded that William O. Douglass æ a very liberal associate justice, I might add æ in 1961, in the case of McGowan v. Maryland, said "the institutions of our society are founded on the belief that there is an authority higher than the authority of the State; that there is a moral law which the State is powerless to alter; that the individual possesses rights, conferred by the Creator, which the government must respect," and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrine those principles. They don’t like to be reminded that there is a God.

Furthermore, they assert that because they are offended there is a constitutional violation. Offensiveness is not the basis for a constitutional violation. If it were, every Christian would be offended because the government now precludes the acknowledgement of a God.

TNA: The court heavily stressed alleged links between you and Dr. Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries in its opinion.

Moore: I know Dr. Kennedy and I know Coral Ridge Ministries. I have no connection. They are not the source of what I do. To think that they are is ridiculous, and the plaintiffs know better. It is an attempt to divert the issue away from the acknowledgement of God. Coral Ridge Ministries has contributed to the defense fund. I appreciate their contributions. I have nothing to do with fundraising or the defense fund, and I have nothing to do with Coral Ridge Ministries.

TNA: In reading the circuit court decision, it appears that the plaintiffs bringing the case against the monument and the court may object more to you personally than to the Ten Commandments monument or to your official behavior as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Moore: You should know that this [the decision] is simply a fulfillment of their plan to distort the issue. I refer you to a July 16, 2002 letter from the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Morris Dees, to Ayesha Khan, legal director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. This case was not tried until October 15th, and I am referring to a letter dated July 16th æ three months prior. This is Morris Dees talking: "I also know that I am a trial lawyer and believe one of my strengths is in telling a story, at least that is what I am told. A judge is nothing more than a jury when it comes to the facts. You might remember that, from the start, I was laying out our trial theme, i.e., how this was the act of a lone religious nut in partnership with a fanatical church. This is the story that will make this case so dirty that no appeals court will reverse [Judge] Thompson to make new law."

TNA: So their strategy from the beginning was one of side-stepping the main issue of the propriety of the Ten Commandments monument and concentrating on a character assassination job against you.

Moore: From that quote, you can see that he intended to make that case "dirty" so that no appeals court would "reverse Thompson to make new law." How he knew Thompson was going to rule in his favor in July is curious indeed.

The plaintiffs in this case are making the rounds nationally for fundraising purposes and distorting the issues, attempting to win by pure force and intimidation. They won’t.

TNA: Have they objected to your behavior as a judge within the courtroom as well as outside of the courtroom?

Moore: Yes, they have objected to my behavior as a judge because I reference the moral foundation of the law when we talked about sodomy, when we talked about adultery, when we talked about separation of church and state. I go back to the legal history that we have here in Alabama, our court case precedents, and the foundations of law to show that these things comport with the Scriptures from which we get our moral foundation. So yes, they do object to my behavior as a judge in that my opinions reflect the moral foundation of the law as well as the monument.

Do they object to my behavior as a judge as far as running the court? No, I don’t think so. They might object to some of my opinions, but they don’t object to my behavior as a judge. Of course, these people who are opposing what I stand for will object to everything that I do.

TNA: It seems to me that they are saying that someone who expresses their beliefs as a Christian should be ineligible as a judge and that intimidation and character assassination is their best way of enforcing this doctrine.

Moore: Sure. That’s exactly it. You are hitting some of the basic premises of what they are doing. They are objecting to me as a person because of what I believe. That’s a very accurate summation of their position.

TNA: The court opinion talks endlessly about the supposed secular potential for the Ten Commandments monument, in contrast with a holy or religious purpose. In context, the court seems to be implying that "secular" is synonymous with "meaningless," that the Ten Commandments can only be displayed if they are displayed in a meaningless context.

Moore: Right. "Secular," in their sense, implies "with no relation to God." Indeed, something can have a secular purpose and be relative to God. The First Amendment to the Constitution reflects that concept recognized in the Ten Commandments, that the duties we owe to God and the manner of discharging those duties are outside the purview of government. That is a secular purpose. It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government.

TNA: Was the First Amendment primarily intended to protect against specific denominations taking over the federal government?

Moore: Basically. It separates the way you worship God from the state. It can be larger than denominational; I’ll say that. But our forefathers perceived it as denominational.

TNA: The key dangerous assertion of the court ruling appears to be the claim that "the state may not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God and attribute to that God our religious freedom."

Moore: We are asserting exactly the opposite, that the state must acknowledge God and that our freedoms flow from that God, the Judeo-Christian God.

Moore: Yes. Anytime you deny the acknowledgement of God you are undermining the entire basis for which our country exists. Rights come from God, not from government. If government can give you rights, government can take them away from you. If God gives you rights, no man and no government can take them away from you. That was the premise of the organic law of this country, which is the Declaration of Independence. Because, if there is no God, then man’s power is the controlling aspect, and therefore power will be centralized.

TNA: There have been some encouraging Supreme Court decisions in recent years restricting or reversing federal usurpations of state and local jurisdictions and violation of individual rights, but overall that does not seem to have halted the relentless trend of the federal legislative, executive, and judicial branches to centralize and concentrate power. Do you see this as a serious problem?

Moore: I see it as a serious problem because we have forgotten that centralized power is not what the federal constitution was about. I see the centralization of power as not in conformance with the federal system of our Constitution, which recognizes sovereign states.

The basic premise of the Constitution was a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances because man was perceived as a fallen creature and would always yearn for more power. It was Jefferson himself who said: "In questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man; but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows. There were sovereign states that had certain rights, and the Tenth Amendment, which said: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Moore: Acknowledge our rights and our God, and stand for what we believe. And as it states in the Bible, "having done all, to stand."

* The Blaine Amendment was a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that passed the House of Representatives but failed to pass the U.S. Senate in 1875. Named after its author, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine (R-Maine), the Blaine Amendment stipulated that "no State shall make any laws respecting an establishment of religion," and that no public funds could go to religious denominations. If Judge Thompson and the U.S. Supreme Court are correct in asserting that the First Amendment was "made binding upon the states through the 14th amendment," the 14th Amendment (adopted eight years earlier in 1867) would have made the Blaine Amendment unnecessary. — Ed.

In 2000, Alabama voters elected Moore chief justice of the state Supreme Court. During the campaign, Moore had pledged to bring the Ten Commandments to the State Supreme Court to conform to the spirit of the Alabama state constitution.

Center for Reclaiming America -- NEWS You Won't hear on the News ...
According to The Birmingham News, seventy percent of respondents support Chief Justice Moore's granite display, which includes the Ten Commandments, and statements from our nation's Founding Fathers that document America's Christian heritage. Only twenty percent disapprove of the monument's display, which was privately funded by Chief Justice Moore, and cost the taxpayers of Alabama nothing. The other ten percent were unsure.

Tom Gordon, "Poll: Most back Moore on Ten Commandments," The Birmingham News, September 15, 2002.

That constitution begins with a declaration that "to establish justice ... and secure the blessings of liberty," the government will be based upon "invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God."

Preamble:Alabama state constitution

Chief Justice Roy Moore: The Commandments were placed in the court to acknowledge the moral foundation of our law and the foundation of our government.

The Importance of Morality and Religion in Government

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)

Morality Without God?

Our founders also recognized that only a virtuous people would deserve the continued blessings of liberty that had been bestowed upon them. Moreover, virtually all of our nation's founders believed that a virtuous people was a necessary pre-condition for self-government, and that virtue could not be had or sustained without religion. President Washington, for example, noted in his Farewell Address that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." Benjamin Rush was even more blunt: "Where there is no religion, there will be no morals."

Reply To Judge Richard A. Posner on The Inseparability of Law and Morality

Moore: The connection is in the foundational documents of our country, including the The Declaration of Independence - EXPLAINED

The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government's prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God. Therefore, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" was made part of the First Amendment.

James Madison and Religion in Public

Virginia's Declaration of Rights

The Declaration of Rights was drafted by George Mason with a small but significant modification by the young James Madison. Mason's draft spoke of "the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion," while Madison's successful amendment provided that "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience." The free exercise of religion was not simply to be tolerated by the authorities: it was a right.

The U.S. Circuit Court in your case ruled that a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama state court building was a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause. How exactly do your actions as a state chief justice amount to Congress establishing a national church?

The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction, and no excuse for interpolation or addition. - Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat 419; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet 10; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U.S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655; (Justice) Story on the Constitution, 5th ed., Sec 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 2nd ed., p. 61, 70.

Religious Clauses in State Constitutions

The Case for Impeaching Rogue Judges

Some observers have cited the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" phrase to argue that only an indictable criminal act, not a ruling in a contested case, can be grounds for impeaching a federal judge. This view, however, is not universally shared. In 1833 the famed Justice Joseph Story explained in his Commentaries on the Constitution that "misdemeanor" refers to forms of misbehavior well beyond indictable criminal acts. According to Story, the impeachment power applies to "what are aptly termed, political offenses, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests." More recently, law professor Raoul Berger points out that "impeachment itself was conceived because the objects of impeachment for one reason or another were beyond the reach of ordinary criminal redress."

I understand the debate between those who would say that the Fourteenth Amendment put the strictures of the First Amendment to the states. They fail to recognize the defeat of the Blaine Amendment in Congress in the mid-1800s.*

WORLD August 24, 2002: Breaking through Blaine's roadblock

Moore: The judge in his own words said that he did not have the expertise to define the word "religion." In fact, in a 79-page opinion he used the word "religion" or "religious" close to 150 times and can't define the term. He said that I was establishing a religion, and it is very curious as to how a court can say you are doing something when that court can't even define what you are doing. This is true of many federal courts around the country.

Phyllis Schlafly Column 3/05/97 -- Republicans Have Duty To Hold Judges Accountable Mrs. Schlafly is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University, received her J.D. from Washington University Law School, and received her Master's in Political Science from Harvard University. Mrs. Schlafly is a lawyer and served as a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 1985-1991, appointed by President Reagan. She has testified before more than 50 Congressional and State Legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, and family issues.

Even that great advocate of judicial power, Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote during impeachment proceedings against Justice Samuel Chase, for his arbitrary use of judicial power, that "a Judge giving a legal opinion contrary to the opinion of the legislature is liable to impeachment." Carter and Clinton judges are constantly making rulings contrary to what the legislature intended.

When President Gerald Ford was a Congressman, he proposed the impeachment of Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas. Ford explained Congress's tremendous and far-reaching power of impeachment: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body [the Senate] considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office."

They misunderstand the First Amendment.

JEFFERSON'S WALL OF SEPARATION: A JURISDICTIONAL INTERPRETATION OF THE 'WALL' METAPHOR footnotes @ link.

The federal Bill of Rights, which includes the First Amendment, served a dual purpose. It was to assure the citizenry that the federal government would not encroach upon the civil and religious liberties of individuals, and to guarantee the states that the federal government would not usurp the states' jurisdiction over civil and religious liberties. The Bill of Rights embodied a principle of federalism; it was essentially a states' rights document.

FEDERALISM AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: WERE CHURCH AND STATE MEANT TO BE SEPARATE?

Why a reproduction of the Ten Commandments would proselytize on behalf of Christianity alone and not Judaism, when both faiths hold fast to the Ten Commandments, was likewise unexplained.

Moore: The judge was unclear because he can't define the term "religion." And that's not only true with this judge, but also with many of the federal courts across our land who seem to think, erroneously, that the acknowledgement of God is synonymous with religion. Indeed, the acknowledgement of God is not synonymous with religion. The definition of the term "religion" - taken from George Mason, James Madison, and the United States Supreme Court - was "the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it," which is your form of worship or articles of faith. The definition of religion is plain in history; it is plain in law; and it is what the federal courts are now disregarding.

Impeachment Clauses

With such basic common-sense principles as do not kill, do not steal, and do not bear false witness, what possible objections could they have to the Commandments?

Affidavit in Support of the Ten Commandments

Moore: They object to the main one, which says there is a God. That's what they don't like. They don't want to be reminded that there is an authority higher than the authority of the state. And they don't like to be reminded that William O. Douglass æ a very liberal associate justice, I might add æ in 1961, in the case of McGowan v. Maryland, said "the institutions of our society are founded on the belief that there is an authority higher than the authority of the State; that there is a moral law which the State is powerless to alter; that the individual possesses rights, conferred by the Creator, which the government must respect," and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrine those principles. They don't like to be reminded that there is a God.

Craig-Atkins Debate: What is the Evidence For/Against the Existence of God?

How he knew Thompson was going to rule in his favor in July is curious indeed.

IMPEACHING FEDERAL JUDGES:A COVENANTAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE TO JUDICIAL TYRANNY

Moore: Yes, they have objected to my behavior as a judge because I reference the moral foundation of the law when we talked about sodomy, when we talked about adultery, when we talked about The Separation of Church and State

Moore: Basically. It separates the way you worship God from the state. It can be larger than denominational; I'll say that. But our forefathers perceived it as denominational.

Denominational Affiliations of the Framers of the Constitution

Is Religion Dangerous for America? The Supreme Court's Liberals Think So.

Moore: Yes. Anytime you deny the acknowledgement of God you are undermining the entire basis for which our country exists. Rights come from God, not from government. If government can give you rights, government can take them away from you. If God gives you rights, no man and no government can take them away from you. That was the premise of the organic law of this country, which is the Declaration of Independence. Because, if there is no God, then man's power is the controlling aspect, and therefore power will be centralized.

Real Federalism: Why It Matters, How It Could Happen

Federalist No. 51

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

There were sovereign states that had certain rights, and the Amendment X, which said: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), letter to Judge William Johnson, (from Monticello, June 12, 1823)

Aderholt "Ten Commandment Amendment"

The following is the text of Amendment no. 28 offered by Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL) to H.R. 1501, Consequences for Juvenile Act of 1999, and H.R. 2122, Mandatory Gun Show Background Check Act of 1999.

TITLE XX--RIGHTS TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

SEC. XX. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds the following:

(1) The Declaration of Independence declares that governments are instituted to secure certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with which all human beings are endowed by their Creator and to which they are entitled by the laws of nature and of nature's God.

(2) The organic laws of the United States Code and the constitutions of every State, using various expressions, recognize God as the source of the blessings of liberty.

(3) The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States secures rights against laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof made by the United States Government.

(4) The rights secured under the First Amendment have been interpreted by courts of the United States Government to be included among the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(5) The Tenth Amendment reserves to the States respectively the powers not delegated to the United States Government nor prohibited to the States.

(6) Disputes and doubts have arisen with respect to public displays of the Ten Commandments and to other public expression of religious faith.

(7) Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment grants the Congress power to enforce the provisions of the said amendment.

(8) Article I, Section 8, grants the Congress power to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court, and Article III, Section 1, grants the Congress power to ordain and establish courts in which the judicial power of the United States Government shall be vested.

SEC. XX. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY RIGHTS DECLARED.

(a) DISPLAY OF TEN COMMANDMENTS- The power to display the Ten Commandments on or within property owned or administered by the several States or political subdivisions thereof is hereby declared to be among the powers reserved to the States respectively.

(b) EXPRESSION OF RELIGIOUS FAITH- The expression of religious faith by individual persons on or within property owned or administered by the several States or political subdivisions thereof is hereby--

(1) declared to be among the rights secured against laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion made or enforced by the United States Government or by any department or executive or judicial officer thereof; and

(2) declared to be among the liberties of which no State shall deprive any person without due process of law made in pursuance of powers reserved to the States respectively.

(c) EXERCISE OF JUDICIAL POWER- The courts constituted, ordained, and established by the Congress shall exercise the judicial power in a manner consistent with the foregoing declarations.

H.AMDT.200 (A026)
Amends: H.R.1501
Sponsor: Rep Aderholt, Robert B.(offered 6/17/1999)

AMENDMENT DESCRIPTION:
Amendment allows States to decide whether or not to display the Ten Commandments on or within publicly owned property.

AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
An amendment no. 28 and printed in Part A of H.Rept. 106-186 to declare that the power to display the Ten Commandments on property own or administered by the States is among the powers reserved to the States.

POPULAR TITLE(S):
Ten Commandments bill (identified by CRS)

STATUS:

6/17/1999 12:05am:

Amendment (A026) offered by Mr. Aderholt.
6/17/1999 11:58am:: On agreeing to the Aderholt amendment (A026) Agreed to by recorded vote: 248 - 180 (Roll no. 221).

Federalism: Reconciling National Values with States’ Rights and Local Control in the 21st Century

A Dialogue I. States’ Rights 1 II. Values and Morality 4 III. Federal-State Relations 6 IV. The Supreme Court 8 V. Policy Variations 9 VI. Localism 11 VII. The Future 13 Resources 15 Editor’s Note: Eight social science, humanities, policy, and legal scholars discuss a wide range of viewpoints on federalism. The conversation traverses historical perspectives on federal-state relations, changes in selected public policy areas within the past several decades, the roles of Congress and the Supreme Court in helping to shape federal- state relations, and prospects for new forms of cooperation in the coming decade.

Sanford Schram (Bryn Mawr College/ Graduate School of Social Work & Social Research): I agree with Genovese’s statement that the shift to states rights in recent years is narrower than what Jackson or Calhoun advocated, but that should not minimize the intensity of the recent effort or its contradictions. In his review Genovese also noted that states’ rights has been largely a rhetorical move useful for asserting ideological positions that were not necessarily about states’ rights. Advocates of states’ rights often were more interested in other things—such as protecting slavery as an institution, avoiding government regulation of business, etc. In this sense, the contemporary push for states’ rights has strong parallels with its questionable past. Today, conservatives seem increasingly split on issues of federalism. Some push for more decentralization, others for an expanding federal regulation of social and cultural issues, and still others (as in the case of welfare reform) argue for combining increased federal regulation with increased state autonomy. Conservative members of Congress advocate the "federalization" of crime policy, while the Chief Justice decries it. The federal government turns welfare into a block grant program with great flexibility, but it requires states to meet work quotas while imposing strict time limits and work requirements on recipients. The Congress defines marriage. These contradictions suggest that there is something other than states’ rights that is being advocated. What is really at work is the effort to win the ideological struggle over the extent to which our society will remain grounded in a particular set of values.

Michael Greve (American Enterprise Institute): Genovese is plainly correct. As Bob Nagel has observed, the idea that a handful of modest Supreme Court opinions foreshadow an impending return to an "antebellum jurisprudence" or the Articles of Confederation (asserted by Larry Tribe, Linda Greenhouse, Jeff Rosen, and others) tells us a lot about the American intelligentsia’s dogmatically nationalist mindset, but next to nothing about the Supreme Court’s federalism, or ours. I agree that the demand for federalism has typically served other purposes. But that’s true of most constitutional norms and principles (e.g., free speech, due process), and I don’t see how it could be otherwise. A constitutional principle without an actual constituency to back it up will soon crumble. I also agree that conservative constituencies with a nominal interest in federalism have been very inconsistent. I suspect that the arrival of the Bush administration will exacerbate that tendency.

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