'Abusive' (or 'hostile,' which in this context I take to mean the same thing) does not seem to me a very clear standard - and I do not think clarity … - Antonin Scalia

Evidently, the governing standard is to be what might be called the unfettered wisdom of a majority of this Court, revealed to an obedient people on a case-by-case basis.

What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion - that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years—not, mind you, not that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to the evolving standards of decency, of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists.

I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to 'require[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary'. But interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.