Are 10 Commandments basic influence of American Law?

No.

If I say yes, does that constitute a debate?

Will you tell us?

Huh? Huh?

OK, then.

No.

Re: Are 10 Commandments basic influence of American Law?
Looking for a little more substance there.

The United States Constitution does not prohibit coveting, neither one's neighbor's goods, nor one's neighbor's wife (or wives)--nor anyone else's goods or wife (wives). Nope, no coveting mentioned there. It also does not prohibit taking the name of the Lord Thy God (certainly not my god) in vain--nope, no prohibitions on blasphemy in there.

I can't believe i'm anwering this silly, silly question.

The only thing that I can think of that coincided with the 10 commandments, were the old "blue laws". To this day, in my state, you can't buy liquor until 1 p.m. on Sunday.............Gotta go to church y'know!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law

There can be no doubt that the religious prejudices of legistlators influence the legislation which they may propose--especially at election time. This, however, is a far cry from asserting that American law is "based" upon the ten commandments. American law derives from English common law, which in turn is based upon the customary law of the Britons, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Norge and the Danes. Even pointing out the influence of the religious prejudices of intervening legislators means little in the contention, because it would still not establish that the ten commandments are the basis of that law. It would also ignore that no Parliament existed prior to the reign of Edward Plantagenet, and that Parliament had little or no real legislative power before the reign of Henry Tudor, seventh king of England of that name. It would also ignore the crucial struggle between Crown and Church to establish the supremecy of secular courts over canon courts--a fight which the church lost.

American Law (or at least as it was written way back in Revolutionary times) is more influenced by the Magna Carta, actually, and Jefferson, et al were big on the natural rights of man which (Setanta, I'm sure you'll know this) was, uh, Locke and Rousseau if I'm remembering correctly. That's where the inalienable rights idea comes from.

Current American Law is influenced more by precedent than anything else. The biggie and I mean biggie, is Marbury v. Madison, upon which judicial review and precedent rest.

While there are some who would like to think they were, they were not.

The ten commandments are not the basis for our legal system. We have no laws requiring you to worship God or honor your parents. You will not be stoned to death for adultery, blasphemy, or working on the Sabbath (God gave Moses over 600 laws concurrently with the oft-quoted Ten and imposed the death penalty for breaking these ones). There are no laws forbidding the worship of idols (the Constitution specifically prohibits the establishment of a state religion) or coveting your neighbor's wife or property. We do not punish children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren for the sins of their ancestors. There are still some Blue Laws but most have been repealed.

We have laws against murder, adultery, theft, and lying, but so does virtually every other culture on earth. They did not get them from the Bible and neither did we.

I don't know how anyone who has actually read Exodus can possibly think that the US legal system is based in any way, shape or form on laws God gave to the Israelites over 3,000 years ago.

I think everybody is pretty much in agreement here that the 10 commandments are not the basis of U.S. law.

So, can we all agree than that it is unconstitutional to display the 10 commandments in a public court of law or on public properties where laws are made? The Supreme Court has already ruled before that it is unconstitutional. But that may change if judge Alito gets confirmed.

I know that there are people that do think U.S. law was designed around the 10 commandments. I was hoping to lure a couple of those people in.

The reason why courts find that the display of the ten commandments is unconstitutional is that it constitutes particularism--i.e., it represents the religious view of only certain citizens.


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

Re: Are 10 Commandments basic influence of American Law?


Don't you mean to ask instead, is the American Law the influence of the 10 commandments? I think you formulated your question wrong because what you say doesn't make any sense as the 10 commandments came thousands of years back and the American Constitution is only a few hundred years old.

Re: Are 10 Commandments basic influence of American Law?
What are you the Grammar police? I think you know what I meant.

I agree with Set, but I'm not sure why yet. I guess I'll have to read more of the thread...

was wondering what occurred for the Magna Carta (cannot remember for nothing but I do have a fuzzy memory that something about religion or the bible had something to do with that??

Not a chance, Husker, Magna Carta (that's Latin nominative, so it is not proper to put the article "the" in front of it) was all about the rights of the peerage and the baronage, and rights in property, plus indemnifying the city of London against retributive acts for having supported the baronage. It had absolutely nothing to do with the imaginary friend crowd.

The main thing about Magna Carta (was about to write the Magna Carta, old habits die hard) is that it was a restriction on what, at the time, was the unfettered sovereignty of the king. It was people -- admittedly, rich and powerful, land-owning people -- putting a small brake on a very powerful force. From this the philosophy of a government being accountable to the people, or at least not 100% immune from scrutiny, eventually arises.

The framers of the US Constitution had classical educations (anyone educated, at the time, did) and so they were familiar with not only history but also philosophy, so they had read up on natural rights, hence the idea of original, inalienable rights, begins to arise, too. But make no mistake, the framers were also wealthy landowners, and most of them wanted those fine inalienable rights to mainly go to wealthy landowners. There was plenty of debate about slavery when creating the Constitution (see: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis for some more about the slave debate during Revolutionary times --- but even the folks who were opposed to slavery were more interested in a gradual withdrawal than anything else, because they knew that that tactic was the only possible way to attract the mid-Atlantic states and possibly get more support for that position (the gradual withdrawal of slavery really didn't fly; states that wanted it gone outlawed it whenever their legislature got around to outlawing it. Those that didn't eventually seceded in the 19th century). Yep, playing politics even then -- horse trading to get your bill passed is nothing new.

But getting back to the basis of American law: later law is based on earlier law, subject to interpretations which cover a lot of areas of scholarship, such as philosophy but also pragmatic considerations, but it all heads back to the Constitution because that's the final arbiter: whether something is Constitutional. And the Constitution itself is based upon philosophy and older British law. The framers (not exactly the same people as the ones we call the founders) were well aware that it would be a living document and would change over time, and they took that into consideration, but a lot of them had their pet concerns (hey, just like modern politicians!) or preferences and that creeps into the discussions. The Federalist Papers are not the only source of their thought processes -- there are letters, journal entries, etc. The origins and original intent behind the Constitution are no simple thing to unravel.

Excellent post, Doggie Girl . . .

Woof, thanks.