The Oklahoman reports that on Friday of this week the Supreme Court is set to consider the petition of Haskell County over its Ten Commandments monument, declared unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit. If the Justices decide to hear the case, it would mark the return to a contentious area of church-state jurisprudence. A panel of experts discussed the prospects at Oklahoma's College of Law late last week.
UC-San Diego professor Peter Irons said if they take the case, the outcome would be difficult to predict.
Legal confusion arose in 2005, Irons said, when the Supreme Court rendered different rulings in companion cases.
Leaders in McCreary County, Ky., posted the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall and later included other documents such as the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta to uphold its legality. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it was still a religious text and thus unconstitutional.
But in the companion case Van Orden v. Perry, the court ruled that a Ten Commandments display with 17 other monuments on Texas state Capitol grounds could remain because of the historical context of its setting.
"It created a tremendous flux in the law, with every judge now having to decide, ‘Is this a McCreary County case or a Van Orden case?’” Irons said.
