The conservatives in the court are sceptical about the federal government overstepping its authority, but state governments are another story. It could definitely lead to major changes and the rolling back of some of the power/authority of the federal government. Which, as I mentioned, carries a risk of eventually pushing the states further apart to the point that the union might fracture.

I do think that. Blue states tend to already have legislation that would keep abortion legal even if Roe gets overturned - and I don't see any reason why such legislation would be struck down.


I don't really disagree with any of that. But the point remains that if liberals absolutely require a supportive SC that's willing to support their interpretation for all those things, then they have bigger problems - i.e., federal law and the constitution being inadequate and needing to be changed. Attempts to keep the SC under control with schemes like this, are just desperate attempts to gloss over the more fundamental problems and are not going to last in the mid to long term.

Abortion is a delicate topic where a balance needs to be struck between the pregnant woman's rights and those of the future baby - it's something that really needs to be settled by a legislative assembly that can weigh all the factors involved and reach a compromise acceptable for most of society, not by a court making far-fetched extrapolations from a constitution's guarantee of rights. Abortion being legal in the entire US thanks to Roe v Wade may be better than it not being legal at all, but it really would be a lot better to have it legal because laws were passed making it so. Same-sex marriage is more straightforward and could more easily be decided by a court, but to some extent the same point still applies due to the historical religious and moral objections against homosexuality, however baseless those may seem to us now.

I guess this may have to do with the civil law vs common law differences, with most of Europe except the UK/Ireland being used to civil law in which it really isn't the courts' job to be expanding rights, just to enforce the laws and constitutions as they are. Which makes me more inclined to take a 'conservative' view on American law as well, even though I'm fairly progressive on this kind of social topics. If the SC needs to twist and very selectively interpret the constitution to justify its decisions, then it's far too close for comfort to an unelected nine-person panel just deciding about things which ought to be in the legislative's purview.

Indeed. I read an article the other day by a Trump-sceptical conservative in which he was sceptical about the whole court packing thing - so I agreed with that - but also mentioned in passing that he considered statehood for DC / Puerto Rico just as misguided and doomed as court packing. Which I definitely do not agree with. I don't see any good reason why Puerto Rico or DC shouldn't have voting rights in the Senate when states with significantly smaller populations do have them. Although I also read articles warning that Dems shouldn't expect to easily pick up 2 Senate seats in Puerto Rico in such a case.

Gerrymandering is practiced by both parties, but yes, that's another problem, reducing the minority party's representation in state legislatures.

I'm not saying I would choose for it to happen. Just that there's a limit to how far I'd go in fighting it against a democratic majority intent on banning it, and to how much I'd want to let the entire political system get bent out of shape over it.

Sure, I can see the similarity. But slavery was a blatant betrayal of the ideals on which the US was founded - and, by the time of the civil war, had become illegal and a moral non-starter in most of the rest of the world as well. I support reproductive rights but I don't think it's that simple there - and it certainly isn't a simple black or white matter which you either legalize or outlaw, all or nothing.

There comes a point where it's cheaper to provide plane tickets to blue states to the women who really need them, than to keep going on like this.

I don't say surrender the fight on reproductive rights. Keep fighting for them, by all means - just surrender on the increasingly desperate attempts to keep a majority on the SC at any cost in order to defend Roe v Wade.

None of those other topics have even remotely the same importance for such a huge number of Republican voters as the abortion debate, though. There is a crazy number of people who really are single issue voters on that one particular point. Some of them would be happy to vote Democratic if not for that, others might lose their interest in voting at all. Yes, many would of course keep voting Republican either way - but far from all.