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Judge Jones Admits the Activist Nature of Kitzmiller Ruling on Lehrer Newshour
Federal judges don’t ordinarily travel around the country speaking about their judicial rulings, but Judge Jones is no ordinary federal judge. While promoting the PBS-NOVA special on intelligent design, he recently appeared the Lehrer Newshour, where he made striking admissions that demonstrate the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling. Two hallmarks of judicial activism are (1) the tendency to resolve questions outside the scope of the judiciary, which are best left to other branches of government,1 and (2) the intent to make policy and influence parties outside of the case.2 Judge Jones’ own admissions on the Lehrer Newshour demonstrate that both of these criticisms correctly apply to his Kitzmiller ruling. Judge Jones’ Expansive Intrusion into Legislative QuestionsFirst, Judge Jones admitted Read More ›
Stemming the Tide on Stem Cells?
We had a “heads up” yesterday from Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith to expect a breakthrough on the issue of embryonic stem cells, and now he has published on it. Read more here.
Fur Flies Over Flew
One way you can tell an ideologue is if he ditches an old friend because the old friend no longer agrees with him. It has happened to me occasionally on the issue of Darwinism, and I rather relish it, frankly. I have been a card carrying member of the Centrist Establishment my whole adult life, so I experience a certain excitement in being stigmatized as an extremist by the Leftist Establishment. Me? An extremist? Why thank you so much! The same thing is happening to Anthony Flew now, in double dosage, and I hope he, too, is enjoying the notoriety.
Design of Life
Nearly 20 years ago, a small non-profit in Texas, The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), published a short supplemental textbook called Of Pandas and People (Pandas). This event did not go unnoticed. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) soon thereafter published numerous reviews condemning Pandas as a “creationist … ‘equal time’ tract” that presented “a pot pourri of half-truths, untruths, and nonsense.” Law review articles were published hoping to prove Pandas unconstitutional. In 2005, a federal judge banned Pandas outright from science classrooms in Dover, Pennsylvania — but only after denying FTE the right to appear before the court to defend the book. Most troubling, the judge largely ignored the published text of Pandas, instead scrutinizing long-forgotten pre-publication Read More ›
Essential Reading: Law, Darwinism, and Public Education
Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent DesignBy Francis J. BeckwithRowman & Littlefield, 2004, 185 pages.ISBN 0-7425-1430-7 Legal scholar Francis J. Beckwith recounts the legal history of court battles over the teaching of biological origins. Though many thought that the landmark Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard would permanently settle these questions by ruling creationism unconstitutional, Beckwith observes that intelligent design poses a new challenge to legal scholars. Beckwith provides a thorough treatment of the subject.