7-4-89 . . . Sunday, during my bike ride, I approached a stop sign near Highway 6. I rarely stop there unless a car is coming, but this time I spotted a police car out of the corner of my eye. Whoops! Better stop, I thought. That led me to wonder: What if the officer knew that my only reason for stopping was to avoid apprehension and punishment? I just as quickly dismissed the question as irrelevant, however, because, for traffic offenses and many other crimes, the reason for compliance doesn’t matter. What matters is compliance. In other words, it’s not important why people comply with the law; it’s important that they comply with the law. In this respect, law differs fundamentally from morality. In morality, it is of vital importance that one act from the right motives. If my reason for not lying to you is that you may find out and withhold some benefit from me, I have not acted rightly. If I save you from drowning in order to borrow your lawnmower, I have not acted rightly. I’m not saying that I acted wrongly in these cases, but surely I didn’t act rightly either. To act rightly, one must be motivated by the interests of others, not solely by one’s own interests. The question is, why is law largely unconcerned with motives or reasons? My answer, simple though it sounds, is that law is practical. It’s difficult and expensive to decide what motivates people, but comparatively easy to determine whether their bodily movements comply with legal standards. That’s why the police officer didn’t care why I stopped at the stop sign, and that’s why I shouldn’t have worried about what motivated me to do so. I stopped; that’s good enough.
Besides its abortion ruling, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on church-state relations yesterday. I don’t know the details of the case, but apparently it involved a Jewish religious display on public property. The Court ruled that such a display was constitutional because there were other, nonreligious displays on the same grounds. In another case, the Court ruled that the display of a single religious symbol (a Christian crèche) was unconstitutional. Go figure. The constitutionality of displaying a religious symbol now depends on the context. If it’s alone, it’s unconstitutional; if it appears with secular objects such as Christmas trees and depictions of Santa Claus, it’s constitutional. Frankly, though this issue used to agitate me greatly, it doesn’t bother me any more. I have bigger fish to fry. I just wish the Court would either prohibit the display of religious symbols on public property or permit all such symbols. On the whole, it has been a boisterous judicial term. (It ended yesterday.) I sense a growing politicization of the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular. People now realize the tremendous impact that the Court has on their lives and values, and they don’t know what to do about it except write letters to the justices and participate in demonstrations outside the courthouse. As a result, much of the mystique that has for so long shrouded the Court is gone. People now see the justices as flesh-and-blood human beings with diverse values and biases, just like everyone else. Law, on this realist view, is another form of politics—a battle for power.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 