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Justice Thomas is NOT a Vibrator.

I'm not sure what else to take away from last week's Slate article on the Court's oral argument in Pleasant Grove v. SUMMUM. Poor Dahlia! She's left trying to make sense out of what seems to be a policy-preference hash. In my free speech seminar this semester, there are no less than THREE (of twelve) students attempting to parse some or all of the Court's religious speech doctrine. So you know Ms. Lithwick, as erudite and capable as she is, has to be feeling a little dizzy in trying to deal.

The case involves an effort by a (let's be charitable) small religious group to force the Mormon-dominated city government in a Utah community to permit them to erect a monument to their guiding principles, the Seven Aphorisms, which although they sound nutty to me, they claim to be the first draft, so to speak, of the Ten Commandments. Since the park where they would like to place their monument has a Ten Commandments monument identical to the one found constitutional in Van Orden, they argue it's the same thing.

But here's the money quote:

Of all the Summum aphorisms, my favorite is probably "everything vibrates." Whoever wrote that had yet to meet Justice Clarence Thomas, who spends this morning, as he does every morning of oral argument, in perfect, motionless repose.

Also:

Summum isn't before the court as a religion case. It was brought as a free speech case, and, as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice learns about three minutes into oral argument this morning, if he wins this case as a result of the court's free speech jurisprudence, he will be back in five years to lose it under the court's religion doctrine.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on November 19, 2008 (boomark / email).