Intelligent Design case lawyer speaks

The Intelligent Design trial Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District may go down in history… The Intelligent Design trial Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District may go down in history as the greatest trial of the century, according to attorney Witold Walczak, because of its maintenance of religious and educational freedom.

Walczak – the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal director for Pennsylvania and chief ACLU attorney for the Dover trial – lectured about the case Monday in the Graduate School of Public Health’s Parran Hall Auditorium.

In his PowerPoint presentation, Walczak outlined the history of the case:

Beginning with former school board President Bill Buckingham’s June 2004 declaration that the new biology books the school wanted to buy were “laced with Darwinism”;

To the anonymous donation of 60 copies of the Intelligent Design textbook “Of Pandas and People” to the Dover High School library;

To the aftermath of Judge John Jones III’s Dec. 2005 ruling – which struck down Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design states that the universe is too complex to have been created solely by chance, and that a higher being created the universe and continues to control nature.

Although the controversy regarding the separation of church and state in public schools isn’t new, Walczak said he believed that this was the first time that a school board in this country attempted to pass a policy teaching Intelligent Design.

In addition, the law firm who defended the school board, the Thomas More Law Center – a Michigan-based firm that deals with cases defending and promoting Christian interests, according to its Web site – intended the Dover trial to be a test case, to see how Intelligent Design and the book in question, “Of Pandas and People,” would fare in the court system, Walczak said.

However, because the case ended at the district court level and will not continue to higher levels, such as the Supreme Court, Jones’ decision only applies in the Dover School District, Walczak said.

But his ruling still has application in future cases.

“His ruling is what is called ‘persuasive,’ meaning that Judge Jones set a precedent that will likely be followed by other judges in the future,” said Walczak, who believes the issue still lingers.

Nonetheless, Walczak still views Jones’ ruling as “a victory for science and for religious liberty.

“It’s a victory all around,” he said.

“Some people might find it surprising that a conservative judge struck down Intelligent Design only months after [President George W.] Bush said that schools should teach the controversy over evolution,” Walczak said. “But Intelligent Design is false science. It’s just a critique on evolution.”

Walczak went on to explain some of the reasons his side won the case.

“One of the problems we had during the trial was pinning the defendants down on a definition, which should tell you something about the theory,” he said. “And I think Judge Jones realized this.”

Walczak also said that Intelligent Design has no real application in higher forms of academia.

“No major secular university science departments teach Intelligent Design, so if Dover taught it, they’d poorly prepare students,” Walczak said. “It’s poor pedagogy.”