I'm sure this will come as a bit of a shock to you all, but the Discovery Institute isn't happy with the ruling. In fact, they're slamming it as the decision of an "activist judge who has delusions of grandeur." Those damn Bush-appointed activist judges! This furious response is just the icing on the cake for me.
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Ed, According to the DI in their reactionary and quite inane article, the ruling is limited to just that district. I don't believe a word they say, but I'm just looking for confirmation, is the ruling broad in scope (U.S.A.) or limited (district)?
Ah, activist judges. I love it when they bitch about 'activist judges.' What it really means is 'judges who make rulings we disagree with.'
Here, here. Stupid Activist Judges and their issuing rulings as if they had the power to do so in the constitution... :)
To answer Inoculated Mind, the legal scope of the ruling is even more limited than that. It has no precedential value at all, and binds nobody who wasn't a party to this case. (Even in the same judicial district, another school board could do the same thing Dover did and a different judge -- or even the same judge -- could rule the opposite way.)
As a practical matter, however, the persuasiveness of Judge Jones's opinion sets the tone for what would be the likely result in other cases around the country.
As Maurile said, it's technically applied only in this particular case. But in reality, it will be used by judges around the nation in similar cases and it will prevent school boards from adopting similar policies. The 1981 McLean v. Arkansas decision was just a district court decision as well, but it was hugely influential and widely cited around the nation.
How prescient of the Judge to suggest in his conclusion that the ruling's critics will claim judicial activism as the cause. More "breathtaking inanity."
I am expecting a lot of accusations, as we've heard during the trial, that this is academic censorship; that the ACLU and evolutionists are out to decide what people can and cannot have intellectual curiosity about.
I may just be too giddy at this moment to speak objectively, but my impression of this decision is that it is an absolutely crushing blow to the ID movement. Ed alluded above to the sweeping, long-term impact of McLean, and elsewhere to the next front in this theater of the culture wars being the nascent "critical thinking" arguments and the like. The DI has good reason to formulate a back-up plan.
It is far too soon to tell, but the Dover decision has the potential to be the seminal moment in which not only "the ID as an appropriate subject matter for science classes" was defeated, but also in which ID itself wanes into obscurity. It is an idea borne of a desire for political gains, rather than garnering any scientific legitimacy. If Judge Jones's ruling diminishes the prospects for political endorsement of ID so substantially that it is no longer viable to that end, ID advocates would simply have no reason to pursue it to any collateral end.
That is about as hopeful a statement as I am prone to make on any subject. Quite uncharacteristic of me.
Wow! Who'd have thunk it? W must really be getting into hot water with the Fundies. First, he sends out an anti-Christian Christmas card, then his appointed judge turns out to be an Atheist Commmie Liberal Activist who legislates from the bench!
Careful! Maybe Judge Alito is really Erich Honecker in disguise!
Judge Jones' decision heavily relied on Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), the binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent against Creationism and Creation Science. Judge Jones ruled that ID is just a disguised form of Creation Science. Edwards v. Aguillard is also the case in which 72 American Nobel laureates in natural science signed an amicus curiae brief against Creationism.
Of course, the Thomas More Law Center could make Kitzmiller a national precedent by taking it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If I were in the new School Board's shoes, I would be very tempted to appeal the ruling just so that the case would go all the way to the Supreme Court and be done with. If the TMLC can be cajolled into funding the whole case themselves, since they might think this is their last shot at destroying science for Jesus, then it would be a worthy proposition.
I think the TMLC needs some TLC.
The school board isn't going to move the case one inch further, I'm sure.
Remember, they were found as having to pay plaintiff's attorney fees - that's going to hurt their pocketbooks. That new school board HAS to know that moving it further will result in more attorney fees and them having to pay those as well.