\n<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, at the UCLA School of Law, history repeated itself \u2014 this time without even the courtesy of waiting for a federal judge.\u00a0James Percival, the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, had been\u00a0invited<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the UCLA Federalist Society for a conversation about immigration law. More than 150 demonstrators\u00a0protested\u00a0the event. Many heckled Percival throughout, yelling, playing doorbell sounds and ringtones, and tapping on desks\u00a0after being asked to silence their phones. The open Q&A never occurred.\u00a0The Federalist Society\u00a0had\u00a0put it plainly in its invitation: \u201cCome, ask your hardest questions, and make your case.\u201d The students answered with\u00a0noise.<\/p>\n This should sound familiar. In 2023, the UCLA script played out at my\u00a0alma mater<\/i>, Stanford Law, now ranked first in the nation. Judge Kyle Duncan \u2014 a Fifth Circuit judge nominated by President Donald Trump during his first term \u2014 had been\u00a0invited<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by Stanford\u2019s Federalist Society to speak. Students greeted him with shouted insults, sustained disruption, and signs. Stanford\u2019s own associate dean joined the heckling from the podium. Duncan was\u00a0ultimately escorted\u00a0out by federal marshals. Stanford\u2019s president and dean later apologized.<\/p>\n Duncan, life-tenured and\u00a0apparently unbothered, returned to his chambers and kept writing opinions.<\/p>\n This week, he may have written his finest.<\/p>\n On Tuesday \u2014 the same day UCLA students were busy shouting down the DHS\u2019s top lawyer \u2014 the full Fifth Circuit, sitting\u00a0en\u00a0banc<\/i>, upheld a Texas law requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Judge Duncan wrote the opinion in\u00a0Rabbi Mara Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District<\/i><\/span><\/a>. It is a serious, carefully constructed piece of constitutional reasoning, and it deserves more attention than the protest theater unfolding across the law school quad. (Full\u00a0disclosure: Rabbi Nathan is a college friend whom I respect but disagree with.)<\/p>\n The legal question before the court was straightforward: Does a classroom display of the Ten Commandments resemble any of the historic hallmarks of an established religion? Duncan shows, methodically, that it does not. No student is compelled to recite the Commandments, profess belief in them, or even glance at them. They are present as part of the moral and legal inheritance that shaped Western civilization and, with it, the country those students live in.<\/p>\n Critics reach reflexively for Jefferson\u2019s \u201cwall of separation between church and state,\u201d a phrase that appears nowhere in the First Amendment. It comes from a 1802 letter<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists as a promise of non-interference, not a mandate to scrub faith from civic life. George Washington was blunter in his\u00a0Farewell Address<\/span><\/a>: A republican government depends on a moral people, and religion and morality are its indispensable supports.<\/p>\n