[dewdrop_world]

For a bit of opposition research (in a safer and saner context than going right to the source), check out The New Republic from (i think) February 20th. (My copy is sitting on my desk at work so I can't check the date now.) It includes a pretty comprehensive review of a recent book by one of Pat Robertson's lapdogs, Jay Sekulow (one of the heads of Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, that perversion of the ACLU).

To sum it up briefly, the book's thesis is that many Supreme Court justices back to the beginning of U.S. history used their faith as a primary guiding factor when ruling on constitutional issues. It presents itself as a scholarly monograph, but the TNR review points out that basically every discussion of an actual Supreme Court ruling is paper thin. When the arguments aren't outright circular (this was a faith based ruling because the justice who wrote it was a person of faith), he often favors convoluted interpretations that support the thesis when explanations based on constitutional logic are simpler and fit the facts better.

The reviewer concludes that the book is not really a serious piece of legal history, but instead seems to be an attempt to lend academic credence to a judicial philosophy that favors "religious" conservatives.

I'm leaving out a lot of details because I'm summarizing from memory, but it's something to be aware of, since Sekulow's viewpoint would certainly erode the free exercise of religion if it became accepted as conventional wisdom.

hjh