The Merits in Newdow

[Nathan Oman]

The Stevens opinion explains why Neadow lacks standing to assert his daughter's claim to be free of government sponsored religion.  However, he doesn't seem to address Neadow's personal right not have the state ineffect attack his religious message to his daughter.  Did I miss something here? (I freely confess that there may be something in the springes of standing law that I am not understanding.)  It seems to me that Neadow had two theories of standing and the Court in the Steven's opinion only addressed one of them.

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Marty Lederman" <marty.lederman at comcast.net>
Reply-To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics <religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:56:31 -0400

>The collection of concurrences on the merits are quite interesting.  The Chief's opinion adopts the SG's argument -- darn-near-preposterous, IMHO (and that of Justice Thomas!) -- that the Pledge is OK in schools because "under God" is "not endorsement of any religion," but instead "a simple recognition of the fact [that] '[f]rom the time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God.'"  
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>Justice O'Connor joins the Chief's opinion, but writes separately to suggest that the Pledge in schools is ok only because of a confluence of "four factors" that will virtually never again appear in combination in any other case.  This result derives directly from pages 24-29 of the amicus brief that Doug Laycock wrote:  http://goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/newdow.laycock.pdf.
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>Justice Thomas concludes -- correctly, in my view, see http://www.goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/Newdow%20Final%20Brief.pdf -- that if Lee v. Weisman was correctly decided, then public schools may not lead students in daily recitation of the words "under God."  Thomas, however, would overrule Lee.
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>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Marty Lederman" <marty.lederman at comcast.net>
>To: "David Cruz" <dcruz at law.usc.edu>; <conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu>
>Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 11:42 AM
>Subject: Links to Newdow Opinions
>
>
>> It appears that those links did not work.  All of the opinions can be found
>> here:
>> 
>> http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/html/02-1624.ZS.html
>> 
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Nathan Oman

http://www.tutissima.com
http://www.timesandseasons.org
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