Month: October 2016

Silly Idea?

A red raspberry laying on a leafWhen the Bible talks about idols of gold and silver, does that have any application to us now?

Is our money a modern-day form of idol? I’ve heard people talk about the almighty dollar, so that makes me wonder.

We don’t make golden calves or set up altars to baal on the mountain tops, but it’s worth reviewing whether there are modern forms of idolatry just as sinful.

Original image: Untitled. By SeRg1o [Image license]

Censorship and the Courts

I was reading “Courts and Censorship” by Hans A. Linde[1].
A sculpture of blind justice holding a balance
He concludes: “When a constitutional prohibition is addressed to lawmakers, as the first amendment is, the role that it assigns to courts is the censorship of laws, not participation in government censorship of private expression. This, I suggest, is not an inappropriate relation between courts and censorship.”

What this means to me is that the courts can take an expression of law and cut out the offending part of the law, while it should not take an expression of ideas, speech or writing and cut out the offending part of the expression.

That’s just so poetic to me. Perhaps the first clause is a way to clarify the definition of judicial restraint.

Original image: Blind Justice 3. By Marc Treble [Image license]

[1] Linde, H. (1981). Courts and Censorship. Minnesota Law Review 66(1), 171-208.