The law, lawyers, and the court.

DecalogicalA Ten Commandments slide show.

By Laura HodesPosted Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002, at 1:50 PM ET

A patchwork of recent court rulings over displays of the Ten Commandments in state buildings has led to confusion about what makes a Decalogue in public places constitutional. The legal issue is whether government displays of religious symbols violate the constitutional wall between church and state. For any Decalogue to survive a constitutional challenge, a court must find it has a "secular purpose" and that a "reasonable observer" would not view its "primary effect" as "endorsing religion." There's been a flood of litigation of biblical proportions, yet these decisions have failed to yield any clear rule about which tablets are secular and which are unconstitutional.

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In general, solo displays on public property of the Ten Commandments have been found unconstitutional. A display of the Ten Commandments containing other documents of "historical" or "legal" significance may be constitutional, but as one court said, unhelpfully, it "depends on the context." Since there's never been a Supreme Court ruling on this issue, deciding how a court will interpret a Ten Commandments display depends on vagaries, including visual context, artists' intent, and even what "aura" it invokes. Yet last month's opinion ordering the removal of a Decalogue from the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building sheds some light on the factors used to evaluate such displays around the nation.

Click here to see the slide show.

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Laura Hodes is a lawyer and has written on legal issues for the New Republic Online and Findlaw.

Photographs of: Ten Commandments monument in the State Judicial Building in Montgomery, Ala., by Dave Martin/AP/Wide World Photos; the East Façade of the U.S. Supreme Court by Josh Mathes/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States; East Façade of the U.S. Supreme Court by Josh Mathes/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States; the South Frieze "The Law Givers" in the U.S. Supreme Courtroom by Frank Jantzen/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States; detail of the two tablets of the Ten Commandments etched into the gates in the courtroom of the U.S. Supreme Court by Catherine Fitts/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States; sculpture in the House of Representatives chamber courtesy of the architect of the Capitol; Attorney General John Ashcroft, under the Spirit of Justice statue by Joe Marquette/AP/Wide World Photos; mural in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court courtroom in Harrisburg, Pa. from the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee/Hunt Commercial Photography; A monument of the Ten Commandments in front of North Adams High School, near Seaman, Ohio by David Kohl/AP/Wide World Photos; Ten Commandments display in Mercer County, Ky., courtesy of American Center for Law and Justice; Frederick, Md., Ten Commandment monument by Marny Malin, Frederick News Post/AP/Wide World Photos; Ten Commandments sculpture n display in front of City Hall in Grand Junction, Colo., by Michael Smith/Getty Images; 5-foot tall stone slab bearing the Ten Commandments near the Texas state Capitol in Austin by Harry Cabluck/AP/Wide World Photos; a Ten Commandments monument in front of the Elkhart City Hall in Indiana, by the Elkhart Truth, Ryan Conrad/AP/Wide World Photos.