For all the broad assertions we'll be hearing in the coming months in the media and from amici about the profound influence of the Decalogue on law generally and American law in particular, it's surprising how few serious scholarly sources there appear to be out there to back them up.
The petitioner's brief in McCreary County v. ACLU is full of these sorts of sweeping statements, yet it's very thin on any actual support -- mostly the conclusory pronouncements of various jurists (including the Chief Justice) and the portentous dicta of various state courts. At one point there's a footnote to an out of print 1999 book that appears to have been self-published (at least it's the only work ever produced by the obscure Christian publisher). Something I did find in a Westlaw search is Steven K. Greene, The Fount of Everything Just and Right? The Ten Commandments as a Source of American Law, 14 J.L. & RELIGION 525 (1999-2000). He concludes, "At best, the most that could be said about the relationship of the Ten Commandments to the law is that the former has influenced legal notions of right and wrong." (I recognize that Prof Greene used to work for Americans United, so may not be disinerested.) See also KERMIT L. HALL, ET AL., EDS., THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW 507 (2002) (noting that "[a]nthropologists report that in every known culture there are rules forbidding some forms of the moral offenses proscribed by the last five of the Ten Commandments"). This is the only reference to the Ten Commandments in that tome of more than 800 pp. Note that this is not the same as the argument its partisans make, which is that the Ten Commandments *influenced* almost all legal structures, or that the ideas the 10C expressed were so unique and original that the Decalogue must be regarded as their very wellspring. The most sensible thing I've ever read on this subject is a Findlaw column by Marci Hamilton, available at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20030911.html Steve Sanders University of Michigan Law School Blog: http://reasonandliberty.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
