NEW YORK (AP) - Hon. Antonin Scalia has defended the court's accommodation of religion in the public sphere in recent rulings, saying the founding fathers would want it that way.

Scalia told the Jewish daily newspaper Hamodia for Wednesday editions that it was never U.S. constitutional, social or legal tradition to exclude religion. He noted that the Supreme Court recently allowed the Ten Commandments to be displayed on the grounds of the Texas State Legislature.

Current law, he said, does not mean the government "cannot accommodate religion, and indeed favor religion."

Scalia said he was at a judges' conference in Rome during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when a foreign judge told him he wished his country's leader could invoke God during a national emergency as President Bush did.