fred smith wrote: Go back and check out the Talmudic study that went on to buttress the decisions and norms of our Supreme Court... You did read about that didn't you? Check out Brandeis...
Hmmm
You mentioned this twice. I assume 'Brandeis' is Louis Brandeis, the great liberal jurist;
-first Jewish Supreme Court Judge;
-advocate for labor rights, bitterly hated by the corporations;
-father (or at least midwife) to the idea of the "living Constitution";
-whose "Brandeis Brief" opened the gates to so much progressive jurisprudence, including
Brown v. Board of Education;
-whose deriving of the right to privacy from the Constitution led to cases such as
Griswold v. Connecticut and
Roe v. Wade.
That Brandeis?
Are you referring to some writings of Brandeis claiming Talmudic influences on the U.S. Constitution?
Seems unlikely, Talmud being a post-Christian development of Judaism- hardly a respectable source of study for 18th-C. jurists steeped in English common-law traditions.
I've googled many combinations of 'Brandeis' 'Talmud' 'Supreme Court', 'Constitution' etc. and have come up with bupkes. Can you give more details/links?
(Searching for those terms leads pretty quickly to some nasty anti-semitic conspiracy sites).
The US Constitution and all of our Supreme Court rulings are founded DIRECTLY on Judaeo-Christian ethics...
Taking up my trusty copy of "The Federalist Papers" (Penguin Classics edition) I look in the Index and find,
Classical references (number of mentions in Index, some multi-page):
Greece (Ancient)(7), (separately) Athens (6), Sparta (6); Rome (all classical, not Christian) (9); Achean League (5); Amphictyonic Council (3); Roman consuls (1); ancient lawgivers(Greek/Roman, not Hebrew) (1); Lycian Confederacy (3); Lycurgus (3); Macedon( 2) ; Pericles (1); Peloponnesian War (2)
Total number of references to Judaism, Christianity, Jews, Christians, Bible (Old and New Testament), God, Jesus, Moses, other Biblical names, places, or references, post-Biblical Jewish or Christian thinkers or ideas:
0 (There's one mention of Cardinal Wolsey, but not by name and not flatteringly- nor about Christianity.)
Religion is mentioned twice: once arguing that more power should rest at the federal level in order to dilute the danger of some religious sect gaining power in one area (foreseeing Mormonism?); and once mentioning that a President, unlike a King, has no religious privileges.
And of course the authors' chosen pseudonym was "Publius"; their opponents were "Cato" and "Brutus".
But then what did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or John Jay know about the foundations of the Constitution?
If they were founding the U.S.Constitution DIRECTLY on Judaeo-Christian ethics they were doing a very good job of concealing the fact.
