Good News from a Surprising Source: The Federal Judiciary

When considering the role of judges today, most Americans emphatically agree with a declaration made two centuries ago by Founding Father Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a framer of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In describing the role of federal judges at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Gerry succinctly declared:

It was quite foreign from the nature of their office to make them judges of the policy of public measures. [1]
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Luther Martin, another delegate at the Constitutional Convention, agreed, declaring:

A knowledge of mankind and of legislative affairs cannot be presumed to belong in a higher degree to the Judges than to the Legislature. [2]
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Two centuries later, Americans still believe that the courts should not be lawmakers or super-legislatures; but they also believe that the courts have wrongly taken unto themselves this role, especially in the area of religious expressions. A recent poll found that seventy-seven percent of the nation felt that “Luther Martinthe courts have overreacted in driving religion out of public life,” and fifty-nine percent believed that the judiciary was singling out Christianity for attack. [3] Such opinions are not surprising when considering that judges and public officials currently: </SPAN>Censor religious words from student graduations but allow all other words [4]
· Allow classrooms to have information on Eastern Oriental and Native American religions but not on Christianity [5]
· Permit Jewish and Islamic holiday displays but not Christian ones [6]
· Allow students to wear Islamic but not Christian garb [7]
· Require students to participate in an indoctrination to Islam in which they must pretend they are Muslims and pray to Allah [8] but prohibit those same students from saying “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance [9]
· Require that if Christians pray public prayers, they may not use Christian words [10]

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