Take Ten

Swell.

The Bush administration, saying that religion “has played a defining role” in the nation’s history, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to permit Ten Commandments displays in courthouses. The Justice Department today filed a brief supporting two Kentucky counties accused of violating the constitutional ban on government establishment of religion by posting framed copies of the Ten Commandments.

“Official acknowledgement and recognition of the Ten Commandments’ influence on American legal history comport with the Establishment Clause,” the administration argued in a brief filed with the court in Washington.

I’ve debated before how much actual influence the Ten Commandments has had on American legal history (not nearly as much, I think, as folk assert), and the degree to which the Ten Commandments are religious laws, not civil ones, but I would be willing to accept public displays of the Decalogue to that end … if other such foundational documents — including bits from Hammurabi, from the Roman codes, etc. — were similarly displayed.

If you don’t do that, then you’re celebrating religious history, not legal history. And that’s probably not proper for government sites, unless you’re going to allow equal time for alternative views.

That seems pretty simple and straightforward to me.

(via Scott)