High Court Deliberates
In a few months, the Supreme Court will come up with a decision regarding abortion rights. Right now, they are digesting the lawyers’ arguments. I suspect that they are aware of the political implications, coming in an election year, that their decision would have. Because of the former president’s three appointments to the SCOTUS, they are clearly political as well as judicial creatures. |
| Justice Sotomayor |
Delivered
by Republicans, this new political view of the Court was emphasized during the
arguments before it when Justice Sotomayor questioned
whether the legitimacy of the Supreme Court would endure if it overturned
abortion rights during a landmark hearing on a Mississippi law restricting the
procedure. “Will this institution
survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the
Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Sotomayor said during
oral arguments Wednesday morning. “I don’t see how it is possible.”
If
their decision amounts to a repudiation of Roe vs Wade, and makes abortion more
difficult nationwide, they will be handing the Democrats a tool to use in
amassing the votes of the nation’s women whom numerous surveys indicate favor allowing
Roe vs Wade to remain the law by large margins. They would
be fools not to use it. This will result in continued Democratic control of
both Houses of Congress. I wonder if
some Democrats quietly hope that this is the way the cookie will crumble. They need the votes of as many women as
possible.
Aware
of this, the Republican-appointed Justices might dance around the issue but
leave Row vs Wade to stand. This would
anger many conservative Republican voters, leave them unhappy, further split
their Party and perhaps contribute to Democratic victories in 2022.
I
suspect the SCOTUS will try to land somewhere in the middle, leaving both sides
with something about which to crow and not affecting the 2022 elections
greatly. Remember, their decision will be political and not based on
jurisprudence. As Justice Sotomayor questioned, will the court “survive the
stench … in the public perception” of it that such a decision would bring
about. Exchanging the doctrine of basing decisions upon precedent, “stare
decisis,” of which Roe vs Wade is part for political expediency might be
the act that leads President Biden, if he maintains a Democratic majority in
Congress in 2022, to attempt to increase the number of Justices on the Court,
which the Constitution does not specify.
And
speaking of those elections, and the SCOTUS, it is time for the Democrats to
convince Justice Breyer to retire so that they can replace him while they still
control the Senate, something that is not guaranteed after the 2022 elections. After
their experience with the Mitch McConnell, who always puts Party ahead of
country, Democrats now know that continued control of the Senate and the
presidency is crucial to the make-up of the SCOTUS. Justices are not immortal, as the late
Justice Ginsberg might have believed.
The ages of SCOTUS Justices seem to indicate dominance of the Supreme Court by Republicans for a long time, unless there is a change in the number of Justices. The Democrats have two Justices in their 60’s and one in his 80’s. The Republicans have two Justices in their 70’s, one in his 60’s but three Justices under age 60, which is ominous for future Democratic legislation unless the Court is enlarged. Not good.
JL
A Choir of Angels
There was a shooting at a Michigan High School
this week by a fifteen-year-old. At
least four students were killed. Of
course, possession of an automatic handgun by a fifteen-year-old is illegal,
but he probably would not have had it were it not for the wide proliferation of
weapons in this country and the legal acceptability of their being carried
supposedly for self-defense. And that can
be blamed on the Supreme Court of the United States.
The only self-defense we need is against vile Supreme
Court Justices like Roberts, Alito, Thomas (all three still serving on the
SCOTUS), Kennedy (retired) and Scalia (deceased) whose votes in D.C. vs Heller
in 2008, supporting Justice Scalia’s opinion, meant
that the last fourteen words of the Second Amendment could stand alone and had
no connection with the Amendment’s first thirteen words. This decision has put hundreds of millions of
weapons, some legal and some illegal, into the hands of American citizens. The Justices who went along with Justice
Scalia’s opinion cannot walk away from the murders they brought about.
The Second
Amendment in its entirety reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I am not a lawyer, nor are most of you, but I do read English. What do you think the words of the Second
Amendment mean?
If the first thirteen words have nothing to do with the second fourteen words, why did the framers of the Constitution bother to put them there in the first place, separated from the last fourteen words by only a comma? Contrary to Scalia’s warped reasoning, the Amendment was intended to allow people to have weapons to bring with them if they were called to serve in a State’s militia. Without these arms, a militia would be weaponless and powerless.
Everyone at the Constitutional Convention in 1789 knew that the Amendment’s wording was a compromise
concerning slave-holding States, whose votes were necessary to pass the
Constitution, potentially enabling them to be able to stand up against the Federal
Government, if its troops were ever used to enforce an outlawing of slavery. (That did happen three-quarters of a century later.)
The tragedy is that these five Justices knew all of this but voted as they did for political reasons because gun rights voters were (and still are) an important part of the Republican base. If you believe there is such a place, I suspect that Scalia is already burning in Hell. The other four will eventually join him there, until this decision is ultimately reversed.
Representative Liz Cheney in response to the
former president’s challenge to debate members of the House Committee
investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Any communications Mr. Trump has with
this committee will be under oath and if he persists in lying then, he will be
accountable under the laws of this great nation, and subject to criminal
penalties for every false word he speaks.”
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