Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Dec 8, 2021 - 8:03pm
kurtster wrote:
It must be a unanimous decision or you consider it wrong.
So if the vote was 8 / 1 or 7 / 2 or 5 / 4 for B v BOE it would have been the wrong decision ?
IIRC the final vote for R v W was 7 / 2. Not a unanimous decision.
The point of stare decisis is to guard against the Court overturning precedents just because the makeup of the Court has changed. The standard is not that a Justice believes it was wrongly decided and would not have voted with the majority if he or she had been on the court at the time. Rather, it is that the precedent is âclearlyâ or âegregiouslyâ wrong, which is what is being discussed now regarding the Mississippi case.
Edit: not the best explanation, but it is late . . .
Oh, like what the SCOTUS did with Brown v. Board of Education ? Overturned a SCOTUS precedent from 1896. On the other hand, the democrats are marching us straight back to separate but equal with their push for "equity".
If, as seems likely, 3 of the 9 Justices ultimately vote to strike down Mississippi’s 15-week abortion restriction and uphold Roe v. Wade, it would render dubious —to me— an argument by the majority that staredecisis could be set aside because Roe v. Wade obviously was “clearly” or “egregiously” wrong.
Oh, like what the SCOTUS did with Brown v. Board of Education ? Overturned a SCOTUS precedent from 1896.
On the other hand, the democrats are marching us straight back to separate but equal with their push for "equity".
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Dec 7, 2021 - 10:41am
If, as seems likely, 3 of the 9 Justices ultimately vote to strike down Mississippiâs 15-week abortion restriction and uphold Roe v. Wade, it would render dubious âto meâ an argument by the majority that staredecisis could be set aside because Roe v. Wade obviously was âclearlyâ or âegregiouslyâ wrong.
One hundred fifty years ago, a woman named Myra Bradwell brought a Supreme Court case claiming a constitutional right to be admitted to the Illinois bar. She had passed the stateâs bar exam with high honors, but the Illinois Supreme Court refused her application, saying that when the State Legislature gave the court the power to grant law licenses, âit was with not the slightest expectation that this privilege would be extended to women.â
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state court, with Justice Joseph Bradley writing in a concurring opinion that âthe paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.â
âThis,â Justice Bradley explained, âis the law of the Creator.â
The case of Bradwell v. Illinois is regarded today as a low point in Supreme Court history, at least by those of us who reject the notion of God as the ultimate personnel administrator. But it turns out that God has a role in the countryâs civic life after all: that of supreme legislator.
Republican politicians used to offer secular rationales for their anti-abortion zealotry: They claimed that abortion hurt women or that abortion procedures demeaned the medical profession. In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, some opportunistic states imposed temporary bans on abortion, making the demonstrably false assertion that abortion patients would take up scarce hospital beds.
But now, sensing the wind at their backs and the Supreme Court on their side, Republican officeholders are no longer coy about their religion-driven mission to stop abortion. In May, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed S.B. 8, the vigilante bill that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, he claimed that âour creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas we work to save those lives.â (There are actually fewer than one million abortions a year in the United States, but letâs not get picky with the facts.)
Two years earlier, signing a bill that criminalized nearly all abortions in Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey called the measure a âtestament to Alabamiansâ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.â
And this year, a Republican state senator in Arkansas, Jason Rapert, declared in explaining his sponsorship of a bill to ban nearly all abortions that âthereâs six things God hates, and one of those is people who shed innocent blood,â as if it were self-evident that he was referring to abortion rather than to the âstand your groundâ bill that he co-sponsored.
I could go on with this list, but these examples are sufficient to raise the question for those of us not on board with the theocratizing of America: Who let God into the legislative chamber? (...)
"The Constitution places exclusive political power in the hands of the wealthy and codifies the existing social hierarchy. That’s elites at the top, followed by white propertied men (land and slaves), then other white men, then women and children with few legal rights, and then slaves and the indigenous with no rights at all. Worth contemplating when Supreme Court Justices position themselves as “originalist” thinkers in constitutional matters. More worrying is that a good part of the country could live with this."
On Wednesday, Justice Barrett dealt the chief justice a body blow. She cast the decisive vote in a 5-to-4 ruling that rejected restrictions on religious services in New York imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to combat the coronavirus, shoving the chief justice into dissent with the courtâs three remaining liberals. It was one of six opinions the court issued on Wednesday, spanning 33 pages and opening a window on a court in turmoil.
The ruling was at odds with earlier ones in cases from California and Nevada issued before Justice Ginsburgâs death in September. Those decisions upheld restrictions on church services by 5-to-4 votes, with Chief Justice Roberts in the majority. The New York decision said that Mr. Cuomoâs strict virus limits â capping attendance at religious services at 10 people in âred zonesâ where risk was highest, and at 25 in slightly less dangerous âorange zonesâ â violated the First Amendmentâs protection of the free exercise of religion.
Wednesdayâs ruling was almost certainly a taste of things to come. While Justice Ginsburg was alive, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the courtâs four-member liberal wing in cases striking down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law, blocking a Trump administration initiative that would have rolled back protections for young immigrants known as Dreamers, refusing to allow a question on citizenship to be added to the census and saving the Affordable Care Act.
Strange times indeed - 3 for 3 on 'liberal' issues having 'conservative' crossover for decisions.
Trump's hubris for acting like the Judiciary and Congress are there to 'serve' him has brought out the territorial power egos from both branches. Roberts is letting him know he doesn't 'own' them. McConnell is chafing under Trump's self inflicted political damage and increasingly endangering the lives on Capitol Hill with reckless rallies. The last 48 hours have seen both McConnell (who has stayed quiet on the issue) and Pence suddenly advocating the wearing of masks.
This 5-4 decision falls even further into the thin-reed category given the circumstances. In 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a very similar Texas law by a 5-4 vote. Roberts was in the minority in that case. His reasoning for switching in this case is solely based on adherence to stare decisis (precedent). He apparently still believes the 2016 case was wrongly decided.
So in thinking about all the recent Roberts decisions, I can't help but wonder (especially after today's ruling)....
A) He knows Trump should have been booted in January/February, and
B) He is going to do his best to leave things as they are until we have another election
He definitely seems to be focusing on the long game, and he can't really like what's going on in DC. Sure, he's supposed to be apolitical....but his life is about the determination of right and wrong.
Yeah, but his Court has already done so much damage, the recent rulings barely make a dent. c.
This 5-4 decision falls even further into the thin-reed category given the circumstances. In 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a very similar Texas law by a 5-4 vote. Roberts was in the minority in that case. His reasoning for switching in this case is solely based on adherence to stare decisis (precedent). He apparently still believes the 2016 case was wrongly decided.
