Q: Should More Conservative Officeholders Defy Outrageous Edicts of Federal Courts? NO: The Rule of Law Obliges Officials to Comply or Resign for Reasons of Conscience

Land, Richard, Insight on the News

Byline: Richard Land, SPECIAL TO INSIGHT

As we have seen in the Ten Commandments/Judge Roy Moore controversy in Alabama, determining which extreme circumstances morally would justify defiance of a court's authority generates great controversy even among conservative Americans who agree on a wide range of other issues. The federal judiciary has bombarded the American people in the last few decades with so many "outrageous" decisions that they have precipitated a crisis by causing millions of U.S. citizens to question not only the correctness of their rulings, but the legitimacy of their authority.

As a Christian and as a conservative I, too, am righteously indignant at the federal courts' attempts to deny our Judeo-Christian heritage and to enforce a rigid and artificial secular bias on our public spaces. I am as angered as anyone by the declaration of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it contains the phrase "under God."

I, too, am angered when courts uphold teachers presenting classes on Islam to encourage tolerance but deny student-initiated, student-led, student-content-dictated prayer before high-school sporting events simply because the government paid for the public-address system (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe).

I, too, am angered when courts rule that competitively won, publicly funded scholarships can be used by students to major in anything but religious studies.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' outrageous decision that Moore …

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Publication information: Article title: Q: Should More Conservative Officeholders Defy Outrageous Edicts of Federal Courts? NO: The Rule of Law Obliges Officials to Comply or Resign for Reasons of Conscience. Contributors: Land, Richard - Author. Magazine title: Insight on the News. Publication date: October 14, 2003. Page number: 47. © 1999 News World Communications, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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