Shut Up, Big Brother Is Talking to You

Alan Wolfe in The New Republic on Pleasant Grove City v. Summum

Government Talk Pretty One Day

Talk about judges making up law out of whole cloth--that, pretty much, is what the U. S. Supreme Court has just done. In Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, the Court, by a unanimous vote, concluded that a somewhat offbeat religious group has no right to place a monument touting what it calls the Seven Aphorisms on public land that already features a monument to the Ten Commandments.

A unanimous verdict suggests that Summum was on shaky legal grounds to begin with. But the decision of Samuel Alito, endorsed by the other conservative judges, relied on reasoning that drew strong objection from some of the Court's more liberal members. It's not complicated, Alito argued. The government, like any individual--or, for that matter, corporation--has the right to free speech. If it chooses to say that one religion's teachings should be represented in public and another's should not be, telling it that such a act constitutes discrimination in favor of one religion and against another is tantamount to denying the government its right to say whatever it wants. . . .

Alan Wolfe, "Government Talk Pretty One Day," The New Republic, 26 February 2009.

The decision is at Pleasant Grove City v. Summum