BONG HITS 4 JESUS -- FINAL EPISODE

Maybe I should have gone to law school. But only if God promised I
would grow up to be a justice on the Supreme Court. The Nine
Interpreters may have more fun than anyone in public life. Tip the
United States on its side and eventually everything loose rolls into
the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia, a skilled ironist, by now
treats the court's annual agenda like a man at a driving range with a
bucket of golf balls. What fun. Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger
discusses the recent high court ruling on public school students'
freedoms of speech.

The U.S. began as a complex country -- thus the genius of the
Founders' template Constitution -- and now finds itself in an
infinitely complex era. The solution of we moderns to this inexorable
multiplier effect has been to burden our institutions with more laws
and more lawsuits. The inevitable result is a society steeped in
unintended consequences. Ask the principal of a public high school.

You have guessed by now that we are going to discuss the famous case
known as "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," aka Morse v. Frederick, decided by the
Supreme Court this past Monday. Juneau, Alaska high-school principal
Deborah Morse defeated high-school troublemaker Joseph Frederick in a
split decision, 5-4.

Years back, as the Olympic Torch parade passed by her Alaskan high
school, Principal Morse ran across the street from the school's front
door and ordered Student Frederick to lower his "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"
banner, judging it a violation of the school district's anti-drug
policy. A "bong" is a marijuana water pipe. A "hit" is the extraction
of marijuana smoke from the bong. The meaning of "4 Jesus" remains in
dispute. Mr. Frederick demanded his constitutional rights. On Monday,
the High Court said, not this time.

It is no exaggeration to say the basis for the decision was akin to
passing a camel through the eye of a needle. For space reasons, I will
briefly "interpret" Chief Justice Roberts's ruling. What he said is
that the list of things the Constitution forbids a child to say in our
public schools is very short. You can say almost anything. But as of
Monday, the list is a little longer: You can't engage in speech
"promoting illegal drug use." Hereafter, speech "promoting illegal
drug use" may be regarded as "disruptive" to school life, as defined
by the Supreme Court in Tinker (1969), Fraser (1986) and Kuhlmeier
(1988).

Justice Roberts was at pains to make clear that speech promoting
"illegal drug use" is the only thing this decision proscribes. That
wasn't narrow enough for the court's other new Bush nominee, Samuel
Alito. He called it a "dangerous fiction" to "pretend" that parents
hand over to school administrators the authority for what their
children may say or hear. The only speech he'd forbid is that which
threatens "the physical safety of students." Drug promotion qualifies.
He ended by warning that Morse "does not endorse any further
extensions" of speech limits.

Two quick thoughts: What the majority did is use the "Bong" case to
throw what weight it could muster behind school authorities beset with
drugged-out students and pushers. Fine. But those confirmation-hearing
wails about Messrs. Roberts and Alito "overthrowing" Roe v. Wade? Not
likely, so long as Roe qualifies as a precedent.

Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, took
about half a line to say, "I agree," and proceeded to write one of the
most compelling essays I've seen on the decline and fall of American
public education. I would happily hand out Justice Thomas's opinion on
street corners (though www.supremecourtus.gov relieves me of that burden).

What he's done is rummage back through school cases, mostly from 19th
century state courts, to invoke the idea of a public school. His
premise is that the schools' role was most certainly in loco parentis,
in that they and parents broadly agreed on what made an adolescent
grow into a good person; what schools need least is court interference
in this hard job.

A North Carolina court in 1837 spoke of the need "to control
stubbornness, to quicken diligence and to reform bad habits." In 1886,
a Maine court said school leaders must "quicken the slothful, spur the
indolent and restrain the impetuous." An 1859 Vermont court spoke of
preserving "decency and decorum."

Missouri's court in 1885 found reasonable a rule that "forbade the use
of profane language." Indiana's in 1888 ruled in favor of "good
deportment." An 1843 manual for schoolmasters speaks of "a core of
common values" and teaching the "power of self-control, and a habit of
postponing present indulgence to a greater future good."

Antique words from a world long gone? Even Justice Thomas admits "the idea
of treating children as though it were the 19th century would find little
support today." I'm not so sure about that. How else can one explain the
flight from the public schools -- into home-schooling, parochial schools,
private schools and even charter schools, which invest public principals
with greater control? Parents are spending thousands to have what American
schools had from 1859 to 1959 -- some basic measure of the Three Ds:
decorum, decency and diligence. Self-control as a higher "common value" than
out-of-control.

Justice Thomas argues that the 1969 Tinker case dragged the schools
into a morass of arcane First Amendment jurisprudence. He's right.

Here's a final quotation from Monday's "Bong" decision to pass out on
street corners: "Students will test the limits of acceptable behavior
in myriad ways better known to schoolteachers than to judges; school
officials need a degree of flexible authority to respond to
disciplinary challenges; and the law has always considered the
relationship between teachers and students special. Under these
circumstances, the more detailed the Court's supervision becomes, the
more likely its law will engender further disputes among teachers and
students. Consequently, larger numbers of those disputes will likely
make their way from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Yet no one
wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judge's
chambers into the principal's office." More right-wing rant from
Clarence Thomas? Nope, that's liberal Justice Stephen Breyer's
concurrence.

I'll go further. Because of the Tinker case in 1969, much of the
cultural disarray of the past 35 years flowed out of schools and into
society. Teachers today will tell you their discipline problems start
at home. Tinker should be tossed. Once the schools can again help
people learn the value of a relatively orderly life and self-control,
the rest would follow.