Reply #22: Western legal theory owes as much to Hammurabi as to Moses [View All]

Hammurabi's Code of Laws, written nearly 2000 years before Jesus was born, provide more detail and structure than the simplified set Moses is said to have been handed down on Mt. Sinai.

So erections to Mesopotamian gods and the Kings of Mesopotamia have just as much basis as a homage as the Commandments. But no one is seriously arguing that other sources of our laws be enshrined.

The rise of the courts of equity as a common sense alternative to the courts of law was one of the results of the Norman conquest of England, and yet we don't hear calls to erect monuments to the Magna Carta, either.

That's because every time someone touts the Ten Commandments he or she is pulling religious one-upmanship over someone else. The Ten Commandments are almost always about "my god is better than your god" and it was classic in the case of Roy Moore.

The reason the Ten Commandments don't belong in a courtroom is that the state is barred from "endorsing" one religion over another as part of the requirement that the activities of the Church and the governing of the State remain separate.

(Hopefully former) Judge Moore broke the law by forcing the endorsement, by the State, of (his particular brand of) Christianity on the people of Alabama. He should lose his license to practice law and be removed permanently from the court.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota