Legal Commentary

Our own Rick Garnett has an op-ed in USA Today, um, today, discussing the government's role in religious expression, in light of the recent Summum opinion.  Rick argues that the government regularly is involved as a speaker within the walls of our "free speech fortress," and that disputes over things like the public display of the 10 Commanemdments may distract us from more serious questions of religious liberty.  Ira Lupu, among others, has remarked on the degree to which religious symbolism cases have taken primacy in Establishment Clause litigation over religious funding cases, and supplies various reasons why this may be.  It's a fine article; I don't have the cite off hand, but I believe it was in William & Mary some years back.  Rick's is a brief and commendable contribution to this conversation.  Rick writes that while we must be sensitive to and cautious about the role of government in religious speech, 

At the same time, we should, in these and similar cases, keep our eye on the religious-freedom ball. The separation of church and state, correctly understood, is a powerful, crucial protection for genuine diversity and liberty of religious conscience. Its proper goal is not to put religion in its place but to keep the state in its place. It is not, however, meaningfully threatened by a Ten Commandments monument in a town park or a land swap involving a cross in the desert. The court should, in a predictable and principled way, enforce the establishment clause by preventing attempts by government to exercise religious authority or to interfere with religious communities' self-government, and leave the monitoring of monuments to the good sense of citizens and to the give-and-take of ordinary politics.