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Michael Newdow has just become the Supreme Court's Rudy Ruettiger. For those of you who don't remember the story (or didn't see the movie starring Samwise Gamgee), Rudy's the kid who always dreamed of playing football for Notre Dame, then finally got his chance for one brief play to great applause but to no real consequence.

Likewise, the crowds are literally cheering for Newdow, whose success in challenging the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance is hitherto a major feat in itself, did a masterful job arguing his case at the court yesterday. Especially good, considering that he's an emergency room doctor who has argued few cases.

"Newdow showed he had mastered the case and his emotions, making a forceful presentation that could teach veterans some new argument tactics," law journalism biggie Tony Mauro wrote in Legal Times. In an article for the First Amendment Center, Mauro called it "a stellar performance … parrying justices' questions and sticking with his strategies with more skill than many veteran advocates."

"No one who managed to get a seat in the courtroom is likely ever to forget his spell-binding performance," wrote The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse. The Washington Post's Charles Lane gushed about how Newdow "would not be ambushed."

"Five stars," was the review from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick. "He may still lose this appeal, but he absolutely won the day."

All of a sudden, Weblog feels like this is Film Forum. We are talking about legal arguments at the Supreme Court, aren't we? Maybe, but that didn't stop the chamber from erupting in applause—" a sound rarely, if ever, heard at oral argument in Rehnquist's tightly run courtroom," notes the Post—when Newdow countered a point by the chief justice.

Even Newdow's daughter's mother, an evangelical Christian who opposes Newdow's effort and who has primary custody of their child, said, "Michael did very well. … He showed as much passion in front of the Supreme Court today as he shows in family court."

But this may be where the Newdow parade ends. The Supreme Court justices—the six of them remaining, since Antonin Scalia recused himself—may have enjoyed bantering with the newbie, but a near-unanimous consensus among observers is that he's going to lose the case.

"Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared to be searching for reasons he should lose, either on jurisdictional grounds or on the merits," wrote the Times' Greenhouse. The Los Angeles Times agrees:" It sounded as though a solid majority of the justices will try to agree on a ruling that either throws out Newdow's claim or upholds the pledge as a patriotic exercise, not a religious affirmation," wrote David G. Savage. The same from Mauro. "Most justices," he wrote, "seemed eager either to avoid the issue or to join the lopsided majority of Americans who tell pollsters the pledge should remain as it is."

The Post was more circumspect: "Although only one member of the court, Justice John Paul Stevens, seemed sympathetic to Newdow's position, the others appeared anything but certain about how to rule against him, if indeed they want to."

If the Supreme Court is going to say—or, rather, reiterate its earlier statements—that the "under God" phrase doesn't constitute a government establishment of religion, the justices are likely to note the difference between the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer.

When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that the Supreme Court has already ruled that children cannot not be forced to recite the Pledge, Newdow referenced Lee v. Weisman, a 1992 decision banning prayers at public school graduation ceremonies. That decision said that even though students were not obligated to pray at the ceremony in question, they were coerced to do so by "subtle and indirect public and peer pressure."

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48