Bible not a legal source

My cousin, Idaho Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, boycotted a Senate invocation by a non-Christian on the false premise: “The fact that our entire legal system was based on the Ten Commandments.”

After three years of law school, two bar exams (Washington and Oregon) and 45 years of practicing law, I have yet to come across a U.S. Supreme Court opinion in which the justices held that our legal system was based on the Ten Commandments handed over to Moses for God’s chosen few, the Israelites.

The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies banned Catholics and, in 1647, Massachusetts enacted a law threatening death to Catholic clergymen. How’s that for unanimity of religious thinking?

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, arguably the most oft-cited expert on American jurisprudence, said this concerning the exclusivity of the Ten Commandments in the development of U.S. law: “Nearly everything in our culture worth transmitting, everything which gives meaning to life, is saturated with religious influences, derived from paganism, Judaism, Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, and other faiths accepted by a large part of the world’s peoples.”

Yes, even paganism was a factor, and to argue otherwise would demonstrate a lack of both understanding and intellectual honesty.

Wayne Wimer

Kent, Wash