Courts' role in science -Reply

[Fred Gedicks]

Eugene Volokh writes (more or less):

>The court could decide that evolution is scientific fact.

. . .

.>The court could decide, as in the Epperson and especially
>Aguillard, that the statute violates the Estab Cl because it's motivated by
>a desire to advance religion.  And I'm sure that there are many people
>who believe that this is indeed the motivation behind the law; perhaps
>they're right.

In both Epperson and Aguillard the status of evolution as a scientific fact
is a clear premise for the holding that the anti-evolution statutes in both
cases are impermissibly motivated by a desire to advance religion.  In
Aguillard the Court draws an unmistakeable analogy between the
suppression of science by the Church in the late Middle Ages and the
medieval era and fundamentalist attempts to regulate the teaching of
evolution in schools.  The basis for this analogy is not that evolution is
science and creationism is not, but rather that evolution is true and
creationism a fairy tale.

Fred Gedicks
BYU Law School
gedicksf at lawgate.byu.edu