Its the first Monday in October and that could only mean one thing ....

... The first term of the Supreme Court opened today. There are already several cases on the docket for this year's term that are both important and actually really interesting; and i'm not talking about the accounting oversight board case.

Religious Libery Case
Salazar v. Buono. In 1934, members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a cross in what is no the Mojave National Preserve to honor those who died during WWI. Because the cross now sits on federal land, it was challenged as an improper embrace of religion by the federal government. To avert any possible conflict, Congress entered into a deal with the VFW -- in which Congress would give the organization an acre of Mojave property on which the cross stands and the group would bequeath a similarly valued parcel of its land ot the feredal government. This proved too cute by half for a federal court, which ordered that the land swap be puton hold. The Supreme Court must now decide whither this land exchange cures teh possible constitutional ill -- or whether the cross must go.

Don't cry "separation of church and state," you'll lose; its no where in the Constitution, (go look).

Also interesting is an 8th Amendment: Cruel and Unusual Punishment case as well as a Second Amendment case that would allow all US citizens to own hand guns (striking down laws in NYC and Chicago against hand gun ownership).

As Judge Sotomayor takes the 9th seat I hope she will remember the words of Justice Cardozo:

"The judge, even when they are free, is still not wholly free. They are not to innovate at pleasure. They are not a knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of their own ideal of beauty or of goodness. They are to draw their inspiration from consecrated priniciples. They are not to yeild to spasmodic sentiment, to vague an unregulated benevolence. They are to exercise a discretion informed by tradition, methodized by anaolgy, disciplined by system, and subordianted to 'the primordial necessity of order in the social life.' Wide enough in all conscience is the field of discretion that remains."

What Cardozo tells us is beware the "good result," achieved by judicially unauthorized or intellectually dishonest means on the appealing notion that the diserable ends justify the improper judicial means. For there is always the danger that the seeds of precedent sown by good judges for the best of motives will yield a rich harvest of unprincipled acts of others also aiming at "good ends."

A's M.