Steve
On Wednesday, March 2, 2005, at 12:37 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 3/2/2005 8:06:25 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:--
The I-X on the front panel is the Bill of Rights, not the Ten Commandments.
This is patent nonsense, and it was supercilliously silly of Justice Stevens to make the assertion today.
Why is it nonsense?
You, and he, say that it represents the Bill of Rights. I have a copy of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is on display in the National Archives, if you do not have one of your own to review. Or you may examine one at http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/bill_of_rights_zoom_1.html.
Please look at the "Bill of Rights." It consists of twelve numbered articles, not ten.
You may mean to suggest that the numbered plaque over the Chief Justice's chair represents the first Ten Amendments, but you didn't. You said it was the Bill of Rights. The facts say that is stuff and nonsense.
Moreover, the docents that lead tours of the United States Supreme Court say that the plaque of the Chief Justice's head "is not the Ten Commandments, but is the artist's attempt to depict moral codes common to all early societies." That interpretation, in turn, is drawn from a summary of the history of the Surpeme Court building produced by the Federal Writers' Project.
Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567
2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/
"The aim of education must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life achievement."
Albert Einstein
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