New Book Reveals Why the U.S. Supreme Court Won't Touch the Ten Commandments

The author of "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing" explains the Supreme Court's reluctance to rule on Ten Commandments displays in state buildings.

Can a Ten Commandments display in Alabama blow up 75 years of Supreme Court decisions protecting the right of free expression?

It's entirely possible, says Susan Shelley, author of "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," a short history published as an appendix to her novel, "The 37th Amendment."

Shelley illustrates in careful detail the history of the Supreme Court's "Incorporation Doctrine," a 20th-century interpretation of the U.S. Constitution that made the Bill of Rights apply to state governments as well as to the federal government.

"The Supreme Court effectively amended the Constitution to say that no state may infringe a fundamental right without a compelling reason," Shelley explains. "A hundred years ago, no one had a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a state criminal trial. States had the power to restrict freedom of speech and of the press. And if a state wanted to hang the Ten Commandments from every light fixture, the federal courts had no authority to stop it."

The risk today is that a Supreme Court ruling on the Ten Commandments could open the Incorporation Doctrine to scrutiny and call into question a constitutional interpretation that has given the Supreme Court the power to control national policy on issues ranging from topless dancing to police interrogations.

"There's a reason the Supreme Court has refused every recent opportunity to decide a Ten Commandments case," Shelley says. "In order to rule that a state can't display the Ten Commandments, the justices will have to find that there is a fundamental right to be free of religious symbols on government property, which will have far-reaching and unpopular consequences. But if they rule that the Constitution gives the states the power to decide whether to display religious symbols, it will force the question of why the states no longer have all the other powers the Constitution gave them."

Susan Shelley will be at B. Dalton Bookseller in Manhattan Beach, California, on Saturday, September 20, from 12-4 p.m. to sign her novel, "The 37th Amendment," and also at Virgin Megastore Las Vegas, in the Forum Shops at Caesar's, on Wednesday, October 15, from 4-8 p.m.

"How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing" can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/rights.htm.

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On the Net:
www.SusanShelley.com
www.The37thAmendment.com

For More Information:
Susan Shelley
ExtremeInk.com
818-386-9552
Susan@ExtremeInk.com

B. Dalton Bookseller
Manhattan Village
3200 Sepulveda Blvd., Manhattan Beach, CA
310-546-5514

Virgin Megastore Las Vegas
In the Forum Shops at Caesars
3500 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV
702-696-7100

Book Information:
The 37th Amendment: A Novel
Fiction/Legal
ISBN 0595230830
Writer's Club Press
July, 2002
Trade Paperback
340 pp.
$18.95