Religion and gerrymandering were the hot topics at last night’s Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Forum, featuring the two authors of the Supreme Court Law Review issue, NYU professor Richard Pildes and Texas professor Douglas Laycock.

Laycock focused on the issues of church-state separation implicated in the Pledge of Allegiance and the display of the Ten Commandments on state and federal property, while Pildes examined the role of the law in the electoral process.

Laycock supported the separation of church and state and criticized the view that government should maintain religious traditions.

“The Fifth Circuit [Court of Appeals] has just said that a big stone monument of the Ten Commandments, is in fact, secular,” Laycock said. “It has, in big words at the top, ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods over me.’”

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case questioning the permissibility of this monument on state capital grounds in Austin, Texas. When asked his expectation of the outcome, Laycock said he was unsure, but he speculated that the Court would strike it down.

Pildes’ article, “The Constitutionalization of Democratic Politics,” describes a conceptual framework for issues like campaign finance, redistricting and political parties. Pildes said the Court has done very little to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

In commenting on Pildes’ presentation, Laycock criticized gerrymandering’s role in partisan political conflicts in the South.

“It is an attempt to eliminate white Democrats in Texas,” he said, “to make the Republican Party the white party and the Democratic Party the black and brown party.”

Pildes has commented on the 2000 and 2004 elections as a legal analyst for NBC News.

He said he was relieved that this election did not result in a prolonged legal battle like the Florida recount in 2000.

“I basically moved into NBC for 30 days,” he said of the debacle of four years ago. “Every time there was some legal development, I would be the person discussing it on the air with someone like Tom Brokaw.”

Pildes said after the forum that Bush’s re-election will be critical to the Supreme Court’s direction in the future.

“This is probably one of the most significant presidencies in the number of appointments, in the ability of the court to be shaped,” he said.

Laycock said that Bush believes the Republican control of the Senate will extend to the judiciary.

But Laycock is optimistic that Bush will determine few appointments in his second term.