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Ten Commandments/Moore/O'Reilly

Brown said:
Shame on the lawmakers who introduced or sponsored this pompous nonsense.
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From where I sit, all I see is "nonsense". A little help for us legally illiterate? What exactly are we looking at here?
 
The 10 commandments


As to why these aren't the basis for western law


Commandments 1-4 deal with solely with religious matters.
7 prohibits adultery which, while a huge concern in the past, is generally left up to the concsience of the parties involved.
10 seems to be a general prohibition against envy or jealousy, something that has never to my (admittedly limited) knowledge been illegal.

So that leave roughly 4 out of 10 (and #5's iffy) as the "basis" of western law, significatly less than 50%. 'Course we won't mention precedents from earlier sources since that just muddies this issue. Or the fact that there are at least 2 different versions of the decalogue in any particular version of the bible. Or that the decalogue is different depending upon which version of Christianity you subscribe to.
 
Upchurch said:
From where I sit, all I see is "nonsense". A little help for us legally illiterate? What exactly are we looking at here?
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Basically, the Act seeks to change the Constitution by preventing enforcement of the Constitution in the Courts. In particular, the Act seeks to repeal the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by making the Clause unenforceable in the courts.

Suppose some governmental official sought to acknowledge "God as the soverign source of law, liberty or government," whatever that means. It could mean, for example, a governmental official taking a blatantly unconstitutional action based upon something that the official deemed to be "God's Word." Under current law, that action would run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

The conventional remedy would be to seek redress in the courts.

This proposed legislation would remove that remedy.

Section 1260 would deprive the Supreme Court of jurisdiction "to review ... any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an element of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official personal capacity), by reason of that element’s or officer’s acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.’’

Section 1270 would make the deprivation applicable to the district courts as well.

The portion identified as section 301 removes the precedential value of any previous cases in which courts ruled upon issues in which a governmental official sought to acknowledge "God as the soverign source of law, liberty or government." In effect, this would effectively legislatively overturn all cases in which an official violated the First Amendment's Establishment clause.

The portion identified as section 302 is a "poison pill" that says that any judge who tries to exercise jurisdiction about such issues shall have committed an impeachable offense.
 
Upchurch said:
From where I sit, all I see is "nonsense". A little help for us legally illiterate? What exactly are we looking at here?
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Quick background: the Constitution created only the Supreme Court and gave it limited jurisdiction, but gave Congress the power to create lower federal courts. One of the "checks and balances" in this scheme is that the subject-matter jurisdiction of federal courts is generally controlled by Acts of Congress (that is, Congress dictates what types of disputes can be heard by federal courts).

What the proposed law would do is use this congressional power to carve out an exception to the jurisdiction of the federal courts: no federal court could hear a case involving a challenge to the acknowledgement by a state or federal agency or official "of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." It's sort of a sneaky, indirect way of making sure that the unfavorable outcome in the Ten Commandments lawsuit against Moore is never repeated - because the next time a similar controversy arises, the federal courts might be powerless even to accept the case.

That's the main idea. The proposed law would also remove the precential weight of prior decisions (like the one in Moore's case) which, if they had arisen after the passage of the law, would have run afoul of it, and it stops federal courts from invoking laws or judicial decisions of foreign countries or international organizations except for English common law (which is already incorporated into the Constitution). Sometimes, American judges facing a difficult or novel legal issue will take into consideration how foreign courts have handled a similar issue. This really bugs people like Moore, because foreign legal institutions are often more hostile to religion than American legal institutions.

Finally, as an enforcement mechanism, the proposed law calls for judges who try to ignore its provisions to be removed from office.
 
Agammamon said:
Commandments 1-4 deal with solely with religious matters.
7 prohibits adultery which, while a huge concern in the past, is generally left up to the concsience of the parties involved.
10 seems to be a general prohibition against envy or jealousy, something that has never to my (admittedly limited) knowledge been illegal.

So that leave roughly 4 out of 10 (and #5's iffy) as the "basis" of western law, significatly less than 50%. 'Course we won't mention precedents from earlier sources since that just muddies this issue. Or the fact that there are at least 2 different versions of the decalogue in any particular version of the bible. Or that the decalogue is different depending upon which version of Christianity you subscribe to.
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I agree.

Furthermore, don't the 10 Commandments reflect the Code of Hammerabi?
 
Agammamon said:
The 10 commandments


As to why these aren't the basis for western law


Commandments 1-4 deal with solely with religious matters.
7 prohibits adultery which, while a huge concern in the past, is generally left up to the concsience of the parties involved.
10 seems to be a general prohibition against envy or jealousy, something that has never to my (admittedly limited) knowledge been illegal.

So that leave roughly 4 out of 10 (and #5's iffy) as the "basis" of western law, significatly less than 50%. 'Course we won't mention precedents from earlier sources since that just muddies this issue. Or the fact that there are at least 2 different versions of the decalogue in any particular version of the bible. Or that the decalogue is different depending upon which version of Christianity you subscribe to.
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Let's not reinvent the wheel here:

http://www.skepticreport.com/download/22874.htm

(Unfortunately, the original thread in its entirety was pruned from the JREF site.)
 
ceo_esq said:
The proposed law ... also ... stops federal courts from invoking laws or judicial decisions of foreign countries or international organizations except for English common law (which is already incorporated into the Constitution). Sometimes, American judges facing a difficult or novel legal issue will take into consideration how foreign courts have handled a similar issue. This really bugs people like Moore, because foreign legal institutions are often more hostile to religion than American legal institutions.
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I'm glad you commented on this section. The section struck me as unreasonably vague and I wasn't sure of its specific purpose. Perhaps it was part of an overall theme: to stop judges from being "activist" judges, whatever that means. Or perhaps it was meant as an insult to the judicial branch, by suggesting that the judicial branch didn't know how properly to interpret the Constitution.

Judges rarely mention foreign laws these days, and they never treat foreign laws as binding. The proposed legislation nevertheless says that a court of the United States may not "rely" on such foreign laws in interpreting and applying the Constitution of the United States. "Rely" is an undefined and vague term in this context.
 
Brown said:
I'm glad you commented on this section. The section struck me as unreasonably vague and I wasn't sure of its specific purpose. Perhaps it was part of an overall theme: to stop judges from being "activist" judges, whatever that means. Or perhaps it was meant as an insult to the judicial branch, by suggesting that the judicial branch didn't know how properly to interpret the Constitution.

Judges rarely mention foreign laws these days, and they never treat foreign laws as binding. The proposed legislation nevertheless says that a court of the United States may not "rely" on such foreign laws in interpreting and applying the Constitution of the United States. "Rely" is an undefined and vague term in this context.
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I think what Moore and his ilk are worried about is some scenario in which a U.S. federal court one day cites a decision of, say, the godless European Court of Human Rights to support a conclusion that something (e.g. gay marriage) is an internationally recognized human right.

This also plays to general archconservative paranoia about international law being used to establish one world government and the loss of American sovereignty.
 
Brown said:
Basically, the Act seeks to change the Constitution by preventing enforcement of the Constitution in the Courts. In particular, the Act seeks to repeal the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by making the Clause unenforceable in the courts.
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So a judge can put a statue of a horned figure in his court with the enscription "Hail all-mighty Satan!" and there is nothing that could be done to stop him (except being voted out of office the next election)? Cool.
 
spejic said:
So a judge can put a statue of a horned figure in his court with the enscription "Hail all-mighty Satan!" and there is nothing that could be done to stop him (except being voted out of office the next election)? Cool.
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Well, under the proposed law, official acknowledgment of God would be okay, but it doesn't extend the same protection to Satan.
 
God, it must be an election year.

I gather that we'd see an interesting argument along the lines of Marbury v. Madison. Would the Supreme Court recognize a statute that held that the Supreme Court could not enforce the first amendment to the Constitution?

I'd guess the supremes would strike down such a statute.

I love a good persecution complex when I see one.
 
CEO

Check the site more completely. The Yurica site looks like a uber-leftist site. That Yurica article cut and pasted a Q&A from the bill's author (i.e. Moore) from a separate site.


Back to Moore's paranoia. When asked who would favor the bill, the response was "those who oppose judicial tyranny."

Rrrrrriiiiigggggghhhhttttt.
 
ceo_esq ( if you are still here)

I have a question regarding your opening post in the pruned thread " Ten Commandments and Legal Tradition".

In this very opening post you say:

First of all, consider the form of Roman Law that survived to be transmitted to successive traditions. By the mid-fourth century, the Roman Empire had become Christian. The sixth-century Codex Justinianeus that supplanted prior sources of Roman law reflected significant influence by and absorption of biblical legal precepts. The glosses to the Codex contain specific references to Mosaic law. Thus, the Roman vestiges you find in later Western legal traditions (including – importantly - canon law, which I’ll discuss a little further on) derive from this heavily Christianized form of law.
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I am interested in reading more about the influence of the Ten Commandments on the Codex Justinianeus.Do you have any readings to suggest? Also, although you seem to consider the influence of TC on the Byzantine Law you don't discuss the matter analytically.

Thanks.
 
Cleopatra said:
I am interested in reading more about the influence of the Ten Commandments on the Codex Justinianeus.Do you have any readings to suggest? Also, although you seem to consider the influence of TC on the Byzantine Law you don't discuss the matter analytically.

Thanks.
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Cleo,

If I recall correctly, I believe this is discussed in Faith and Order: The Reconciliation of Law and Religion by Harvard/Emory professor and legal historian Harold Berman. That work might not be the best source, but it's the first one I can think off of the top of my head.
 
Thank you very much. I traced the book this afternoon and it discusses the matter indeed. I still wonder though why scholars do not refer to that influence and people believe that the Roman Law is the only legal tradition on which the Justinian Code was based. Do you think that it has anything to do with the fact that the Ten Commandments are of Jewish origin?I don't wish to believe such things but I have learned to be suspicious I wasn't born suspicious.

The reason I am asking is because as I have told you before, some months ago I gave a copy of your post to some students in the Law School. One colleague ( but not so famous about his education, if I am allowed to say that) saw it and he almost accused me ( not in a direct manner of course) that I spread jewish-protestant propaganda at the University composed " by jewish-american lawyers".

This episode saddened me very much and I wish to explore the matter further.

Thanks for your help anyway.
 
Cleopatra said:
Thank you very much. I traced the book this afternoon and it discusses the matter indeed. I still wonder though why scholars do not refer to that influence and people believe that the Roman Law is the only legal tradition on which the Justinian Code was based. Do you think that it has anything to do with the fact that the Ten Commandments are of Jewish origin?I don't wish to believe such things but I have learned to be suspicious I wasn't born suspicious.

The reason I am asking is because as I have told you before, some months ago I gave a copy of your post to some students in the Law School. One colleague ( but not so famous about his education, if I am allowed to say that) saw it and he almost accused me ( not in a direct manner of course) that I spread jewish-protestant propaganda at the University composed " by jewish-american lawyers".

This episode saddened me very much and I wish to explore the matter further.

Thanks for your help anyway.
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Anytime, Cleopatra.

Yikes, so now I'm a Jewish-American lawyer-propagandist? I think that many people (even many contemporary lawyers) are unfamiliar with the multiple Christian influences on Western law, and some of the people who are familiar with them are uncomfortable with the concept. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many people are neglectful of the Jewish legacy to Christianity, and some of the people who are familiar with it are uncomfortable with that concept. One consequence of these circumstances may be that, as you suggest, the subtle nexus between Mosaic law and subsequent Western civil-law and common-law systems tends to be obscured.
 
I don't know how things are in USA or where you are right now but success among litigators in Greece is measured by the type of Mercedes they drive.

Many colleagues are not interested in the academic side of the profession something that it's totally their right but they feel obliged to attack those who see beyond the fee.

I do not understand either why some Christians feel weird when they discover the Jewish legacy of their religion as if this realization makes them feel more jewish!!
 
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