Tag: Supreme Court

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The Implications

Today it was revealed that the Supreme Court is likely to rule to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Everyone is hopefully clear on the fact that overturning “Roe vs Wade” does not make abortion illegal.  It throws the problem back to the states which now may either ban it, partially ban it, or allow it, depending on the whims of state legislators.

States will now be allowed to compel women to carry a pregnancy to full term whether they wish to or not, even in the case of incest or rape.

If this indeed is going to be the ruling (which will be handed down in June), there are some enormous implications.  Off hand, I can think of these:

  • The Democratic base will be energized going into the fall congressional elections.  This is Mitch McConnell’s nightmare.  Mid-term elections generally favor the opposition party at least partly because the government doesn’t have a burning issue to run against– it is the government many people like to vote against no matter what stripe.  But overturning Roe vs Wade may light a fire under the Democrats.
  • The issue should play well for the Democrats.  About 60-65% of Americans support the general right to abortion, though they also think limits should apply.  Democrats can cite the government telling women what they may or may not do with their bodies.  Republican state governments are going to “compel” women to carry pregnancies to term which can be spun as intrusive or egregious or over-reach or patriarchal.  Republicans cannot really run on “life begins at conception”– at least, I’ll believe it when I see it.
  • Further to that — evangelical Christians will not be satisfied with overturning Roe vs. Wade.  They want the Supreme Court to go further and ban all abortions.  Life, to them, begins at conception.  They may begin to demand that their Republican trolls reflect that in their legislation, which may be a bridge too far for independents and moderate Republican women.
  • Why stop at Roe vs Wade?  There are host of privacy rights implied in the principle that the Constitution does not protect them.  Strip searches?  Infrared scans of homes?  Drones?  Cell phone messages?  Library records?  Who says we (the FBI, Homeland Security) can’t look?   Who says those records are private (unless the police have a warrant)?
  • So when really does life begin?  If state governments begin debating this issue, and pass legislation, and this legislation is appealed to the Supreme Court, we will have an even bigger can of worms.
  • State Senate races in close states could swing.  Susan Collins is safe for now– she has five years left in her term.  Lisa Murkowski– lucky for her– voted against Kavanaugh, so she is probably safe.  But many other Republicans running in purple states will have to answer the question of who they would confirm to Supreme Court given that they might make another really stupid decision.  (Is “stupid” a blunt instrument?  I mean, Alito and Thomas are obviously not fools, but I stand by my conclusion of the fundamental soundness of their reasoning behind their votes on Roe vs Wade.  In the totality of their disregard for history, culture, justice, and just plain common sense: stupid.  Just plain stupid.  It can stand with the Dred Scott decision– that negroes are not “persons”.)

As you would think is obvious, the ruling is at odds with conservative ideals about government being restrained from intruding into areas of personal freedom.  The government should not be able to require you to wear a mask  around vulnerable people even if you could be infected with Covid 19, but it should be allowed to compel you to carry a pregnancy to full term.

 

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Ketanji Brown Jackson

I really wish Biden had not announced, during his campaign for the presidency, that he would appoint the first black woman justice to the Supreme Court.

There was no need.  He should have said nothing and then gone ahead and appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson out of the blue, as his choice as the most qualified candidate.

Not because he was wrong.  But because it fed into the false far-right narrative that deliberately choosing a black woman and excluding all white men or women is a form of racial discrimination.

So if a black person is charged with a crime and appeals his verdict all the way to the Supreme Court and is a confronted with 9 old white men who will arbitrate his fate, there is no problem.  They are the best.  They are the most qualified.  And there could not possibly be the slightest racial bias embedded in their judgements.

That’s what the far-right would have you believe because, to be blunt, they are too stupid to see a problem.

What they ignore, of course, is, first of all, that there very likely is a racist element to the selection of those judges.  Every single Senator who voted to confirm those justices could openly, sincerely declare that race did not play a role in their choice to confirm.  But that would imply the belief that racism played no role in the establishment that created the network of personal connections, criteria, cultural institutions, inflections, language, and so on that provided them with the nominees from which they chose the members of the Supreme Court.  They might even sincerely believe that these old white male justices would have enough amazing insights into all of the issues and conditions that black people experience to render an objective and fair verdict on each case.  They might believe that black people experience the same law and the same enforcement strategies as white people and that, therefore, there could not possibly be any discriminations or injustice in the way the police and prosecutors conduct their prosecutions.  The police are just as likely to stop or pull over a white citizen for a “random” check as a black citizen.  They are just as like to respect his rights and assume innocence as a they would for a white suspect.  They are just as likely to use physical force.

That is a fantasy.

I don’t think they really believe it themselves.  They know they cannot openly declare that only white people (or black conservatives) should be on the Supreme Court because they are white.  They can’t openly declare that black people are trying to steal the material benefits created by hard-working white people.

They can’t admit that Clarence Thomas was chosen because he was a black conservative and they relished the idea of liberals having to consider rejecting a black nominee just because he was a lousy ideologically driven judge.

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The Supreme Strippers

The Supreme Court, featuring the immortal Clarence Thomas, has just ruled– 5-4, of course, (Republican Appointees vs. Democratic Appointees), that the police may strip search an individual even if he has only been charged with the most trivial crime. And that is not an exaggeration: the justices were explicit. Overdue speeding ticket? Walking a dog without a leash? Litter? Literally, even the slightest offense.

I am amazed that five adults could conclude that the a strip search is a rather trivial price to pay for a procedure of dubious efficacy applied to people who just don’t seem likely to be much of a threat to law and order. Again, the justices were explicit: the police don’t have have to have any particular reason for believing that a suspect might be in possession of a weapon or other contraband. They can just do it. For fun, if you will.

The internet is a creative conduit for civil discourse: there really ought to be a group created to monitor the Supreme Court justices at all times. It should be coordinated on Facebook or a private website. People can volunteer and take turns following the five justices around, taking pictures and video (which can then be posted to the internet) to make sure they aren’t doing anything illegal. These volunteers should absolutely observe the letter of the law. Hoo haw! Make way for the new “reasonable”!

At what point do you think a Justice might complain that he doesn’t like being followed or observed or recorded or spied on? What right would they have to complain? It is perfectly reasonable to infringe a little on someone’s privacy in order to accomplish a greater good. It is clearly in the interests of the citizens of the United States to make sure that their Supreme Court Justices are not doing anything to besmirch the reputation of the courts.

One of the rationales for this ruling is that the court should not interfere in the practice of law enforcement unless absolutely necessary because that would be “judicial activism”. Like repealing legislation enacted by a duly elected congress. Like Obamacare.

Another reason given– this one is a real gem– is that any of these people arrested and strip searched might turn out to be Timothy McVeigh or one of the 9/11 hijackers. And…. so, a strip search might have revealed that McVeigh was packing 2 tons of explosive fertilizer? He might have been planning to blow up the prison? A strip search would have stopped him?

Or Mohammed Atta might have had a box-cutter hidden under his scrotum?

And he might have littered or jay-walked just prior to boarding the aircraft?

That would surely have tipped authorities off to the plot…

It should surprise no-one that Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the way he did: this is the man who ruled that it is not unreasonable for a large policeman to take down a child and handcuff her for eating a French Fry on a subway platform.

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The Psychopathic Justice

The New York Times Article

In his dissent in Mr. Florence’s case, Judge Louis H. Pollak, a former dean of Yale Law School, was also skeptical of the majority’s theory. “One might doubt,” he wrote, “that individuals would deliberately commit minor offenses such as civil contempt — the offense for which Florence was arrested — and then secrete contraband on their persons, all in the hope that they will, at some future moment, be arrested and taken to jail to make their illicit deliveries.”

The older I get and the more I see of cases like that of Mr. Florence the more I believe that the difference between criminality and civility in our society depends upon who was first to pull out the gun.

Mr. Florence got a ticket once. In 2003 he committed a traffic offense. He paid his fine. He obtained a letter from the court certifying that he had paid his fine– God knows why he even thought for a second he would ever need it. Just because he was black? Because he was a financial adviser to a car dealership and made a decent wage? Because he drove a BMW?  [You know, I suspect that a certain segment of the population has already sighed a little sigh of condescension: well– he’s black and driving a BMW…..]

Then, in 2005, Mr. Florence was pulled over. His wife was driving and his four-year-old son was in the back. The cop called up the record of the offense and arrested Mr. Florence on the spot. Mr. Florence showed him the document from the court showing that he had paid the fine for the offense. The cop– representing you and me and all other white taxpayers, and Clarence Thomas, one must suppose, because he sure as hell didn’t seem to represent any coloured taxpayers– arrested him anyways. He was held for eight days.

You don’t believe that? I don’t either. Here’s a direct quote from the NY Times article:

Mr. Florence was nonetheless held for eight days in two counties on a charge of civil contempt before matters were sorted out.

Say what you want about the NY Times, they almost always have the facts right, so I believe it.

But here is the issue germane now– maybe– to the Supreme Court: he was ordered to strip, bend over, and separate his cheeks while a group of manly police officers looked on.

Mr. Florence is asking the court to rule that such intrusive, humiliating actions are not justified by the law. The prosecutors argue that such procedures are justified by the enormous risk of people driving around with drugs or weapons stuffed into their anuses on the off chance that a police officer might stop them, call up a paid traffic ticket on their computers, and prove incapable of decoding the information correctly and decide this person was a threat to society and needed to be locked up in the same jail cell as a rich convict who had secretly arranged the entire thing from his prison cell and doesn’t care where the contraband has been.

The black man on the Supreme Court will relish ruling against him, but what about the seven sane members (Scalia, in my view, is nearly a psychopath) who might consider Judge Pollak’s perspective above.

What kind of person believes the police should have the right to pick up a man — seemingly at random– and strip search him and hold him for eight days… for a traffic offense (if one were to assume, crazily, for a moment, that Mr. Florence was even guilty of not paying the fine)?

Yes, the Supreme Court said, “that’s all right, that’s all right, that’s all right with me…”

[Update 2022-04-30]

And of course it was a 5-4 decision.  But don’t worry– Amy Coney Barrett has assured us that the Court is not political and of course the 5 who voted in favor of this outlandish travesty were not Republican Appointees (oh yes they were).

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Clarence Thomas, Wake Up

Thomas criticized the majority for imposing ”its own sense of morality and retributive justice” on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences. ”I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens,” Thomas said. NYTimes, May 17, 2010

That is a stunning declaration.  What I do, says Thomas, as a Justice on the Supreme Court, is rubber-stamp any cockamamie decision you want.  But we know: as long as it is a conservative decision.

Wow! Even for a long-time follower of the diminutive career of Justice Clarence Thomas, this one is particularly mind-boggling. He appears to have forgotten what the Supreme Court is for. He calls it a “moral judgment” but what he is talking about is the job of the court to ensure that government legislation and policy does not infringe on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Thomas, having accepted the job of navigator on this airplane, suddenly exclaims, “why are we on an airplane? We should be on a boat instead” and jumps out the window.

What is a “moral judgment”? The majority (6-3) simply agreed that the Constitution of the United States prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. Is it a moral judgment to force voters and legislators to obey the constitution? Could it be that the framers of the constitution didn’t mean cruel and unusual? Maybe they meant to ban “reasonable and humane” punishments instead.

One has to ask the obvious question: does Clarence Thomas know he is on the Supreme Court? Does he understand what a Supreme Court does? If the Supreme Court is not capable of “making such moral judgments” about what was meant by “cruel and unusual”, then what exactly, one wonders with astonishment, is the function of the Supreme Court?

But then we know what Clarence Thomas’ answer would be: to prevent suspects from defending themselves against criminal charges. To prevent citizens from suing corporations. To prevent corporations from being unprofitable. To prevent minorities from oppressing the majorities with their extravagant demands for equal opportunity, fair wages and a safe workplace. To prevent women from stealing jobs from white men. To prevent black men from stealing jobs from white women. To prevent parents of minority school children from demanding trained teachers and science labs. To prevent reporters from demanding information. To prevent police from having to seek medical attention for injured prisoners. To prevent privatized prisons from having to provide adequate space and staff for prisoners. To prevent witches from witching and sorcerers from corrupting the minds of young children with their liberal theories and scientific text books and pagan culture. To prevent feminists from being feminine and masculine men from using mescaline. To prevent guns from falling into the hands of pacifists and pacifists from falling into the hands of lesbians. To prevent lesbians from being lesbians or living in sin or enticing gay-bashing preachers to have children they could adopt.

Let us all now and forever and again deliriously sing the praises of the unlawful, the unconstitutional, the transcendent Clarence Thomas. May he go down in history as the only Supreme Court Justice to ascend directly into heaven.

Thomas might answer that the Constitution is not a moral document. But that’s not the issue and he knows it, for he asserts that Congress and the voters have the right to make “such moral judgments”. I think Thomas would concede that what he is saying is that the “moral” content of the judgment that a life sentence is too harsh for a mere property crime is not subject to constitutional constraints.

If the public wants to torture and hang a witch– so be it. Who are we to say they shall not torture or hang a witch? Who are we to say there are no such things as witches?

My other ecstatic tribute to Justice Clarence Thomas.

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After John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court and George Bush appointed Priscilla Owens in his place, the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade. …

Be careful what you wish for. I have to credit an article in the Atlantic Monthly from May 2006 for this insight: a Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe vs. Wade means that every State will then be able to write its own legislation on abortion, which means that the Republicans, while proclaiming their wholesale devotion to the right to life position, will suddenly actually be in a position to impose their views on the country. Is this something the smart Republican really wants?

The core of the Republican coalition is the Christian Right. Have you ever heard these people discuss abortion? Have you ever heard them discuss possible exemptions for rape or incest? This is a very uncompromising bunch. They will not be happy to vote for a Republican who promises to allow those exemptions. But if a Republican proposes a law without those exemptions, he will risk the wrath of up to 70% of the electorate who believe there should be reasonable limits– but not a wholesale ban– on abortion. In that sense, the true-believer Republicans will suddenly fall into the category of “extremist”.

Any Republican who realizes this and decides to take a moderate position risks being turfed by his own party in the primaries, which are dominated by the true believers.

It is quite possible that, in many states, a Republican candidate for state government, or even for congress, could not get nominated without support from the die-hard Christian right.

The Democrats might or might not be wise enough to propose “moderate” legislation, either limiting abortion to the first three months, or even to cases of incest or rape.

It is possible that such developments could alter the political landscape in the U.S. for a good 20 years.

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Yoo hoo– America? Your constitution is being abrogated. Do you care?

Probably not. No, don’t get up from Survivor or American Idol. Take your popcorn and your super-sized cola back to your couch. Relax. You are white and middle class and… well, . You have nothing to fear. The man on trial is dark-skinned. Like that man they shot after he fled that plane in Miami.

Mr. Salim Ahmed Hamid–he’s Yemeni– used to drive Mr. Bin Laden’s car. That’s right. And America caught him somewhere– in Afghanistan, I believe. Certainly not in Iraq– you know– that country that didn’t have any connection to Mr. Bin Laden? Salim Ahmed Hamad is on trial. Well, no he isn’t. Well, yes he is.

Okay, so Mr. Hamad used to drive Mr. Bin Laden’s car and he was his body guard. So that’s a crime, right? Right– this was after Mr. Bin Laden was no longer a friend of ours. That’s right.

So it appears that Mr. Hamad might not have actually broken any laws in America, or overseas, actually, but damnit– that’s no excuse for letting a known chauffeur to a terrorist former tool of U.S. foreign policy go free. We’ll try him anyway. Mr. Bush can just appoint a bunch of men– make them military men– and we’ll just hold a “trial”. After all, Mr. Bush was elected, so it’s not as if he were unaccountable.

Mr. Hamad’s lawyer thinks he should be entitled to a fair trial, due process, and all that crap. You’d almost think he was white or spoke without an accent. Is the ad almost over? So the Supreme Court is trying to decide whether or not the President could just appoint anybody he feels like appointing to hold a trial or something like it and pass a sentence or just shoot the bastard, without damned interference from those pointy-headed justices or congressmen or anybody else.

Lucky for Mr. Bush, the Republican appointees, including Mr. Thomas– who was so impressed with the arguments of Mr. Bush’s lawyer representative, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, that he didn’t feel the need to ask a single question– are all on his side. Well, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Alito certainly are, but Mr. Roberts can’t vote on this one because, as a Federal Appeals Court justice, he already voted in favor of Mr. Bush’s position. He might at least have asked a question or two. I think Mr. Thomas did at least ask for a new crayon after a rapid-fire exchange of barbs between Mr. Clement and Justice Souter.

My fellow Americans, consider for a moment that in a case before the Supreme Court which many people consider to be one of the most pivotal in decades in terms of its impact on executive power and judicial process, Justice Clarence Thomas asked not a single question. He wasn’t even curious. He didn’t know what the hell Souter was all holy and loud about. Shut up Ginzburg! Kennedy, what the hell are you whining about? Is it dinner time yet?

Some brilliant artist out there should create a giant painting, a Guernica of American civil justice, called “Thoughts Entering the Head of Clarence Thomas as the Solicitor General Offered to Relieve the Court of Habeas Corpus”. I’m not an artist but there is such a desperate need for this art work that I might just make an attempt at it myself.

Justice Scalia shouted, why are we even hearing this dispute? If the President wants to arrest people and jail them, hell, he doesn’t need our permission. But before Clement could leave, Mr. Kennedy grabbed him by the collar.

Commercial over? Go back to your tv. Hey, it’s Natalie Holloway that they’re putting on trial…. Ha ha! Just kidding. What do you think this guy’s chances are?

On Osama Bin Laden’s Former Chauffeur

Imagine, if you will, an entire Supreme Court made up of Justice Clarence Thomas’s. This court would plow through a hundred cases in a month– not a single question would be asked of the lawyers arguing the cases! Whatever the government asks for, it receives. Whatever a defense lawyer asks for is denied. Criminals would not have been arrested if they had not been doing something wrong. If your creek is poisoned, move to another creek. If you think the government has secret information about you, tell us what it is and we’ll find out if it was wrong for them to obtain it. It is possible that your gender had nothing to do with your chances of being sexually harassed by your white male middle-class boss.

Life is simple and sweet.

Clarence Thomas’ thoughts on due process must be somewhere down here.

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Alito’s Joke

The Judicial Committee Hearings on Judge Alito are the funniest in years. The Democrats ask him what his view on abortion is and he says he has no views and even if he did, it would be unethical for the Senate to approve of a candidate to the Supreme Court who could actually explain what he thinks about the law.

The Republicans crawl on the floor and kiss his wounded knee. His wife bursts into tears and flees the room. Oh, those nasty, nasty, vicious, oppressing, liberals!

George Bush admits that he nominated a man with no views at all. He would like Alito to approach each case that comes before the Supreme Court the way a good chef approaches brain surgery.

Is anybody really confused? The Bush Administration knows that it could never nominate the candidate it really wants– James Dobson– to the Supreme Court, so they find a low-profile candidate and tell him to hide his views and then try to pass him off as a moderate and attack the Democrats for being obstructionist and for supporting “activist” judges.

It’s not an activist judge that locks up people without trial? Or has evidence destroyed so DNA testing can’t prove innocent people have been executed?

If abortion ever comes before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito promises to approach the issue with an open mind. I repeat: with an open mind. George Bush did not put him on the Supreme Court to please the Christian Right. How could he have, when clearly Alito has no beliefs about the issue of abortion. None at all. If you have a book on abortion that you could send him, he would appreciate it, because he has never, ever given the slightest thought to the issue of abortion. In fact, if you could send him a doctor who could, in plain English, explain to Judge Alito what abortion is, that would be wonderful and he would be ever so grateful.

I can just imagine him jumping out of his chair after a presentation, “by golly– I was wrong! I think a woman does have the right to terminate a pregnancy.”

That, at least, is the possibility he asks us to imagine. Is this a lie? Would Jesus lie?

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Samuel Alito’s Personal Views

I don’t give heed to my personal views. I interpret the law,” he has said. Washington Post, January 9, 2006

I’m sure conservatives must believe that liberals do the same thing, but, in the debate about Judge Alito, I have to highlight the determination of conservatives to associate their issues with motherhood and apple pie values to sell them to a majority of Americans who probably don’t really share their views.

Do most Americans want to roll back “one man, one vote”? Alito does. He voted against a ruling that prohibited states from awarding congressional delegates on the basis of radically unequally populated districts. So they would map a huge proportion of blacks into one large district and give them one delegate, and then map white neighborhoods into numerous districts, giving them many delegates. Alito did not see a problem.

His defenders could probably rightly argue that the founders of the nation did not intend “one man, one vote”. That is surely true, because the founders of the nation did not expect negro slaves to be voting at all, ever. Is that what Americans want? But that’s what conservatives are really talking about when they claim that they only want “strict constructionists” on the Supreme Court. Why is this idea so holy? Do people seriously believe that humankind hasn’t made any progress since 1776?

Think about it– conservatives want a country that is guided, in law, by the intentions and ideals of rich white men who lived in the 18th century in New England. That’s democracy?

Did the writers of the constitution intend for women to vote? Did they intend for corporations to be held liable for deaths and injuries caused by pollution or defective gas tanks? Did they ever imagine, in their wildest dreams, that any business or organization would ever not have the right to fire homosexuals?

My second gripe about the conservative defense of Alito is this “personal” business. Alito claims that he would never allow his personal views to affect his rulings. He asks us to believe that the Bush administration should really have no reason to prefer him, over, say, Laurence Tribe. Or he wants us to believe that Tribe’s personal views will affect his interpretation of the constitution, but Alito’s will not. What a glorious ego! Is he any good– ask him. Conservatives don’t have an ideology: they make perfect sense. It’s those liberals who hold extremist, radical views.

It would be a great service to all of mankind, and to the cause of truth in general, if everyone would just get over this issue and proclaim, loudly from every rooftop, “of course my personal views will affect my judicial actions– that’s what they’re there for”. Because this is pure bullshit. What planet do these conservatives come from? They ask us to believe that all of Alito’s previous positions and policies were all based solely on his amazing and transcendent affinity with the pure law, up there in the heavens, and have never once been sullied with human feelings or passions or preferences. The fact that all of his previous rulings and positions– every single one of them– supported conservative ideology is pure coincidence.

Conservatives seem to believe that it is a transcendent, eternal truth that homosexuality is a willful act of social defiance. It is a transcendent, eternal truth that women’s work is not as valuable as a man’s work. It is a transcendent, eternal truth that black children and white children should not share a classroom.

And somehow they believe that it is judicial “activism” to read, into the constitution, the right of the government to regulate the activities of a woman’s womb.

This would be a joke if this myth were not so insistently parroted by everyone on the right now as they form a magical choir, uniformly singing the praises of “Alito, Alito.” Roll back judicial activism! Rosa Parks– get back to the back of the bus!

And the reason they rejected Harriet Maier so vehemently? Not for her ideology or personal views, surely– which were suspect on abortion or women’s rights. No, no, no– we don’t judge nominees by their “personal views”, no, no, no.

It’s because she didn’t have that mystical, pure affinity with divine law. Or maybe because she was a broad– I don’t know.

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“Constructionist” Judges

Some opponents of our permissive abortion laws like to point to “activist” judges who read “new” rights into the constitution, and thereby helped cause the moral decline of America.

I just realized that one problem with this argument is that abortion was not illegal in 1776. It wasn’t. Britain passed some of first anti-abortion laws in 1803, and the U.S. followed, but abortion was a widespread practice of midwives and doctors until the late 19th century, when, as part of a backlash against suffrage, and partly as a humanitarian movement, it was steadily restricted.

Let’s hold the word “widespread” with caution: nobody can know with certainty just how common the practice was.  But we do know the other thing: it was not in any criminal code anywhere until after the Constitution was written.

So if a nominee to the Supreme Court was determined to divest the court of rulings that were not faithful to the vision of constitutional government held by the founding fathers, he might just come to the conclusion that, as in 1776, the state has no business intruding into women’s bodies.

[added May 2008] I suppose Mr. Alito or Mr. Roberts or– God help us– Clarence Thomas– might respond that advances in science and medicine since 1776 have enlarged our understanding of life inside the womb and so on, and therefore justifies a more restrictive ruling on the issue. Well, well, well– isn’t that exactly the argument of those non strict contructionalist judges who believe the Constitution is a living document that needs to be understood in the light of history and science. Maybe, given today’s realities, the 2nd amendment doesn’t make any sense any more.

And maybe now I understand why the Supreme Court hasn’t done anything to stop the use of torture by the U.S. government: in 1776, Trial by Ordeal was not so far removed from normal judicial practice.

[2022-05]

The argument here stands in need of clarification and refinement.  The Supreme Court in Roe vs Wade ruled that no state may infringe upon a right of “privacy” that it held was implicit in the Constitution.  In 2022, the Supreme Court seems ready to say it was incorrect about that: there is no implicit right to privacy.  That’s the actual Constitutional issue.   It’s just clear that many evangelical Christians are under the mistaken belief that abortion was not legal in “the good old days”, before the nation was swept by a tide of immorality and sensualism, drug use, long-haired hippies, and Al Gore.