Supreme Court Justices' Attendance at Annual “Red Mass”

       Religion Clause scholar Professor Marci Hamilton, writing on Findlaw, recently questioned whether the attendance of six Justices at the October 1 “Red Mass”, held each year by the D.C. Archdiocese as the Supreme Court term begins, could create an appearance of an inappropriate link between Church and state.  Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito, all of whom are Catholic, and Justice Breyer, who is Jewish, attended the event. In a post on the Concurring Opinions blog, University of Alabama law professor Paul Horowitz offers a different possible interpretation of the event and suggests that the conclusion that judges must see their religious obligations and the performance of their official duties as in tension or conflict fails to consider that judges “may well best understand their religious obligations as demanding that they faithfully and humbly hew closely to their professional obligations as lawyers and judges”. As Professor Hamilton noted in her column, although First Amendment scholar Geoffrey Stone recently faced much criticism for his assertion on the University of Chicago law faculty blog that the result in Gonzalez v. Carhart was the work of what he identified as “our faith based Justices”, she believes Stone’s comments raised important concerns.  For an earlier related discussion, see Professor Michael Dorf’s Findlaw column on Justice Alito’s confirmation and what significance could be attached to the existence of a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court.