I had posted this article not so much to highlight the faith/atheism issue as to highlight the way judging often works in reality. This case had caused a huge

I had posted this article not so much to highlight the faith/atheism issue as to highlight the way judging often works in reality. This case had caused a huge uproar in 2002 when Judge Reinhardt had led a panel in striking down the Pledge as unconstitutional. While no politician would defend the decision, the case went up on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which punted on it by holding that the plaintiff, a gadfly lawyer named Newton Minnow, lacked "standing" to bring it - this meant the Court invalidated the decision while avoiding the jurisprudential pit into which it might lead under the Establishment Clause line of cases. The striking thing that happened here is Mr. Minnow found a qualified plaintiff to renew his attack and saw it head to a friendly panel of the Ninth Circuit that seemed highly likely to invalidate the 'under God' language, with Judge Reinhardt and another leading liberal judge - one who had a track record of striking down laws promoting religion in such contexts and who was a 30-year friend of Judge Reinhardt's - constituting two of the three panelists. Yet the decision did not go as expected, and it appears that this resulted as much as anything from a pragmatic decision by the second liberal judge on the panel not to want to go against the political headwinds that the case inevitably presented. I had clerked for a federal court and often saw this sort of thing. Judging may appear "objective" or "disinterested" but, in reality, where a case is politically charged, the politics often affects the outcome - and that appears to be what happened here. Actually, this is somewhat surprising from the Ninth Circuit appeals court, which has a long history of following its own path on such issues (and hence has a historically high reversal rate in the Supreme Court). Hope this isn't too much "inside baseball" stuff. I think it depicts an interesting reality within our courts that many do not appreciate in taking a mere headline view of such decisions. This piece does a fine job of bringing out the human issues that can so affect the judging process.