The Ten Commandments are worse than irrelevant.
I'm still stumped as to how they have anything to do with U.S. law. They are not the ancestor of any modern law system in the first world. Rather, the Roman code of law (slightly influenced by CHRISTIANITY in its latter development maybe, but surely not the OLD Testament) is the ancestor to almost all European law systems. For Americans, our law stems from the "common law" developed in England, which has nothing to do with the Ten Commandments either.
The claim that the Ten Commandments are the "foundation of all our freedoms" is grade-A horse manure.
Seriously, if you look at them, which commandments are relevant?
1. Endorsement of monotheism.
2. Forbids graven images of God. Boy are we following that one well. Only the Muslims are sticking to this, folks.
3. Taking the name of the Lord in vain. Again, great track record.
4. The Sabbath is holy. Not followed at all.
5. Honor & obey your father and mother. Great advice, not a law.
6 - 9. Don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie.
10. Don't covet your neighbor's possessions.
Commandments 1-5 have nothing to do with a secular society.
Commandments 6-10 are so fricking obvious that to claim that the Ten Commandments are the sole source of these, or even a "barely relevant source," assumes that before Moses came down from the mountain all humanity was living in barbarism. In fact (embarrassingly for Moses!) a nearly identical set of laws were encoded in Egypt as part of THEIR religious creed, including Commandments 5-9, as part of a ritual formula a dead person must recite upon finding himself before the afterlife's judges. It's all in their equivalent of the Testaments, the Book of the Dead.
The second Ten Commandments, written by Moses after the first set broke, are even LESS relevant to any civilized society, if such a thing is possible. See Exodus 34 (for those of ye who know thy Bibles). Possibly proving that the old con man & his followers were incapable of learning anything useful, even from the ancient Egyptians.
The Supreme Court Justices should understand this background fully. In the frieze which decorates their building Moses is one of EIGHTEEN lawgivers including such infidels as Mohammed and Confucius, and such Catholic devils as Napoleon, St. Louis and Charlemagne. Heck, there's even an Orthodox saint, the Emperor Justinian.
If you want to call anyone on that frieze the "ancestor of modern law" I would have to credit the Romans and Greeks pictured there. In other words: Lycurgus, Solon, Drace, Octavian, and Justinian. Notice that there are five of them?
SOLON in particular is important. He was put in charge of writing the Athenian constitution after a period of unrest... sound familiar? He pardoned debt, freed the Athenian equivalent of serfs, replaced birth with wealth as a criterion for office-holding, instituted progressive taxation, made military service compulsory even for the rich, and created a new court of appeal for the lower classes. As far as I know, Solon's Constitution was the first to give a democratic assembly power in Athens. Oh, and he also invented trial by jury. In other words, he is pretty damn important. Far, far more important than Moses, in fact.
In a Supreme irony (pun intended), Solon also wrote a list of ten "commandments," in the form of advice on ethics. Diogenes Laertius wrote them down in his capsule-biography of Solon:
I. Trust good character more than promises.
II. Do not speak falsely.
III. Do good things.
IV. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
V. Learn to obey before you command.
VI. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
VII. Make reason your supreme commander.
VIII. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
IX. Respect the gods.
X. Have regard for your parents.
Notice how qualified Solon's advice is, compared to the commandments of Moses. Solon doesn't say you must obey your parents, but he DOES say that you must "have regard" for them - treat them respect, make them a player in your decisions, and do not wilfully spite or harm them. Solon does not insult us by listing all the obviously bad things we must not do, but reminds us with commandment 7 that we should always trust our reasoning ability to see us through. He urges us to indulge in all deeds we think are good - something Moses does not do. Solon tells us we must know our place in society - "learn to obey before you command" - but also emphasizes in five commandments (1, 2, 4, 6, 8) that character and honesty must be the basis for evaluating other people. Again, Moses is silent on this issue.
The Commandments of Moses are insulting, patronizing, simplistic and sometimes even barbaric. All of the Commandments of Solon apply to a modern, secular society.
Just to wrap this up fast, I also want to follow up with some facts on those other four Greeks and Romans on the Supreme Court walls - Lycurgus, Drace, Octavian, and Justinian.
LYCURGUS of Sparta started their tradition of "spartan," ascetic militarism. But he also was one of the first Greeks to devise a system of government divided against itself - in this case, splitting power between a king, a senate, and a series of governors.
DRACE or DRACO, one of Greece's harshest lawgivers, is another word-root historical figure (draconian). His solution to bankruptcy was slavery. Draco's laws were so bad that the desperate people of Athens got a poet by the name of Solon to revise them. But he was the first Athenian to actually write down and codify legal traditions.
OCTAVIAN succeeded his uncle Julius as Caesar of Rome and ruled so well that his title, Augustus, became the permanent title of following emperors. For years after his death, what we know as the Pax Romana was actually called the Pax Augusta. He also got a month named after him, just like his uncle. Octavian is almost as important to the Supreme Court's functioning as Solon - he instituted the principle of "precedent," allowing justices to draw upon previous rulings. Giving prior interpretation of the law a legal status allows us to reference a "spirit of the law" as well as the letter of it.
JUSTINIAN, emperor of Byzantine Rome, had so many accomplishments that he was made an Orthodox saint. And while we're on word roots, where do you think "justice" comes from? Under Justinian's guidance, his advisers literally compiled, edited, and rewrote all of Roman law to date, shaping it into a coherent whole. The statutes of Justinian (Codex Justinianus) are the precedent for all European law that followed. In the compilation process, Justinian also gave the words and opinions of legal scholars official weight, thus modernizing the code and reforming some of the provisions that stemmed from less civilized times. Justinian's Code is the first Roman law to make mistreatment of a slave a crime; it also abolished class as a legal distinction and as a criterion for officeholding.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Compared to the accomplishments of these 5 fellows, what did Moses contribute to our legal tradition? Nothing. He was one of at least a half-dozen ancient kings, priests and philosophers to formulate a set of written laws. And his wasn't even in the top five.
I haven't even talked about what the other 12 lawgivers did, and there are some great names up there - Napoleon (for his Code Napoleon), John Marshall (for judicial review), Hugo Grotius (founder of international law, originator of "just war" concept) and many many others. Frankly, Moses is irrelevant.
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