Wow. It takes real courage to equivocate like that.

The Supreme Court took a real stand today on whether displays of the Ten Commandments on government property are constitutional, or whether they violate the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. The justices, in yet another 5-4 ruling, said that the answer is "maybe."

David Souter's majority opinion has all the fire and verve of a product warranty:

"A determination of the Counties’ purpose is a sound basis for ruling on the Establishment Clause complaints...[Displaying] text is thus different from symbolic representation, like tablets with 10 roman numerals, which could be seen as alluding to a general notion of law, not a sectarian conception of faith. Where the text is set out, the insistence of the religious message is hard to avoid in the absence of a context plausibly suggesting a message going beyond an excuse to promote the religious point of view...the Court does not decide that the Counties’ past actions forever taint any effort on their part to deal with the subject matter. The Court holds only that purpose is to be taken seriously under the Establishment Clause and is to be understood in light of context. District courts are fully capable of adjusting preliminary relief to take account of genuine changes in constitutionally significant conditions. Nor does the Court hold that a sacred text can never be integrated constitutionally into a governmental display on law or history."

What a victory for positive law. So it seems that it's OK to show the Decalogue "symbolically," representing it as a few solid ideas some guy decided to carve onto stone tablets. Whatever your belief system, you have to agree that the people who used these as a basis for their systems of jurisprudence certainly didn't think they were merely the result of one dude's acid trip on a mountain. It is their divine character which imbued them with power and relevance, and which has given them a longevity such that we're still discussing them today. Stripping away the context strips away an enormous chunk of meaning as well.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying we need to start reciting them at the start of every kindergarten class. But I'd have been happier if the justices would have just made a simple decision one way or another, rather than making, effectively, none at all. No, that's not fair: what they did decide was, "You guys in the lower courts decide." Courageous.

Well, at least we have Scalia to get us fired up. In his dissent, we read such gems as "What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle." Amen, my brother...ahem, "indeed, my colleague."