It's Thursday, April 23, 2006.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

We've been talking about some big court action in recent days, and now we have to go to the Fifth Circuit, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That traditionally

has been a pretty conservative court, but it was narrowly split. It was an eight and nine

decision just days ago in which this Fifth Circuit upheld the right of the state of Texas to

require the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms.

It's part of a larger display, also mandated by the government. And so you have Texas, and Texas

really became the lead. Other states began to do the same thing, requiring the posting of the Ten

commandments. Some of you have a memory that this has been going on as a matter of public controversy for a long time.

And you're exactly right.

But what happened this week at the Fifth Circuit is setting up what almost assuredly will be a very significant Supreme Court battle.

Now, as we've often discussed, the Supreme Court gets to decide which cases it's going to take.

And one of the things that makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will take a case

is if there is a divide at the circuit level.

So you have the federal district courts, and then you have the circuits, the courts of appeal,

then you have the Supreme Court of the United States.

If you have a difference, a disagreement

at the lower level, at either the district courts or the circuits, that's more likely

setting up a scenario in which the Supreme Court will decide to take the case. There is another

situation, and we could add two here. One of them is if the situation directly relates to an explicit constitutional issue.

And at least in terms of this argument, well, that's done.

But the other issue is when you have a case very narrowly divided.

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