David DeWolf is a law professor (Gonzaga) and senior fellow
at the Discovery Institute.
In 1999 DeWolf, together with Stephen Meyer and Mark DeForrest, coauthored the 40-page booklet “Intelligent Design in
Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook,” in which a strategy for
legal cases involving teaching Intelligent Design creationism in public schools
was laid out, claiming that Edwards v. Aguillard mandated “teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of
humankind” subject to a “clear secular intent of enhancing ... science
instruction.” If only ID had been a scientific theory, it would have been good
to go, of course, but it isn’t so DeWolf and his gang needed a backdoor. The
strategy they developed did not help particularly much in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
In response to Kitzmiller v. Dover, DeWolf et al. whined that ID is a “valid scientific
theory”, that the court should not have addressed the question of whether it
was a scientific theory, and that the decision will have no effect on the development
of ID as an alternative to evolutionary theory (the latter of which is of
course true, since ID-ists were never in the business of developing a theory
anyways but rather to get anti-evolution into schools). Their screeds are
discussed here,
and absolutely demolished here (note also the discussion of an amicus brief containing some rather
astonishingly disingenuous claims authored by DeWolf for the case)
He – and in particular his ardent support of “teach the controversy” (i.e. manufactroversy) –
was cited at length by Santorum in the latter’s Address to Congress regarding the infamous Santorum amendment,
and it appears to have been a law article by DeWolf that provided the blueprint
for Santorum’s amendment.
Diagnosis: In many ways DeWolf is a fine symbol of the
Intelligent Design movement. His efforts are of course all about legal
strategies for implementing creationism in public education. And that, of
course, is what ID is about – it has never been about doing science.
