Huckabee Misleading About Ten Commandments in Supreme Court

Earlier I posted about Mick Huckabee’s statement about hanging the Ten Commandments in the White House as I debunked his claim that they form the basis for our laws. During the same interview Huckabee justified hanging them in the White House by saying that the Ten Commandments are in the Supreme Court. Steve Benen both linked to my earlier post here and gave some important details about the Ten Commandments hanging in the Supreme Court.

Steve noted that “there’s a frieze just below the ceiling in the court’s main chamber that depicts the evolution of the law over the past several centuries. As part of the decorative horizontal band, there’s a depiction of Moses cradling two tablets, which is obviously meant to represent the Ten Commandments.” Moses is only one small part of the frieze:

Also included are Confucius, Mohammad, the Old Testament’s Solomon and Hammurabi, founder of the ancient Babylonian Empire. (Ironically, Hammurabi is depicted being given his famous law code by Shamash, the Babylonian sun god, meaning that the sole depiction of a deity at the high court is a Pagan god.)

The frieze also contains non-religious figures who shaped the law, such as Napoleon, Charlemagne and ancient Greek and Roman figures. The clear purpose of the frieze is to educate about how the law developed, not endorse religion or state that U.S. law is based on a specific religious code.

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