Eh… this is kind of nothing. Jurists quote religious texts all the time. Judge Ho–the topic of the article–doesn’t quote the Bible in a particularly eloquent fashion, but he’s far from the first US judge to use a biblical quote to make a point.
And yes, they quote the Quran too–just not as much since not as many of them are familiar with it. Law is a reasoning profession, and people who practice it like finding analogies and drawing distinctions. If they see that a set of facts is like or unlike something from ancient history, they’re likely to bring it up. They’ll bring up song lyrics, mythology, popular proverbs, ancient legal texts, moral fables–anything with any reasoning or legal thinking in it.
Trump appointees are deserving of criticism for horrible jurisprudence, terrible judgment and insight, and piss-poor qualifications. There are plenty of things to hate about lots of them, but “they quote the Bible sometimes” isn’t one.
They quote the Bible in the context of a court ruling implicitly backed by the full force of the judicial branch, unless and until a successful appeal is made.
There is no context in which including religious references in US court decisions is acceptable, and that’s specifically because of the Establishment Clause:
The Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation establishing an official religion, and by interpretation making it illegal for the government to promote theocracy or promote a specific religion with taxes. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits the government from preventing the free exercise of religion.
Emphasis mine.
Is there a similar limitation placed on the judiciary?
It’s pretty obvious to anyone with more than a few brain cells that it’s intended to apply broadly to the government in general.
But of course, the “originalists” love selectively interpreting parts of statements to be the the statement in entirety (in the context of the particular issue they’re trying to opine judicially upon). Which directly implies an absurd level of cognitive dissonance, considering how much those very same judges enjoy bitching about “liberal judicial activism”. They’re 100% ok with judicial activism… as long as it’s not liberal.
