The conservatives in the court are sceptical about the federal government overstepping its authority, but state governments are another story.
The jurisprudence on state level gun control laws (which are going to be a big motivator to replace RBG with a conservative justice) show otherwise. As, honestly, does Bush v. Gore. Conservative justices are as susceptible to letting their biases dictate outcomes in cases at the State level as the liberals.
I get that the conservative <I>rhetoric</I> is about limiting Federal overreach, but that's not really the practice.
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. </Quote>
Whatever not? Once the federal protection of Roe is removed, what's to stop Republicans in Virginia and Colorado and Illinois from challenging those state laws that permit abortion, and what's stopping the Conservatives from striking down those laws when the case comes to the Supreme Court?
You seem to think the chief conservative issue with Roe is that it didn't respect the pastiche of state laws. But this chief issue is with the fact that it legalized abortion. And give the effort to specifically make sure the Justices in the Supreme Court they add are pro-life, what's your basis for assuming their pro-life stance won't guide them on cases about state level abortion laws?
And what about a federal law allowing abortion? Let's say the Dems pass one. You think this bench will not overturn it?
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.
Of course. Capturing a liberal majority in the Supreme Court is hardly a cure-all. It's a short term bandage.
<Quote>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. </Quote>
No. This is just needed because in the very short term, you're going to need stuff like climate legislation which cannot wait for longer term protects to improve the fundamental structure of American democracy. To protect that legislation, you need a court not unfairly stacked against the liberal majority. But by no means is it going to fix everything, or work 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.
That sounds nice, but legislatures in general have no shown themselves to be amenable to fact based deliberation. Certainly, the United States Congress has not.
<Quote>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. </Quote>
You're making the assumption, again, that a legislative right to abortion will not be challenged by this Court. What's your evidence for that?
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. </Quote>
Yeah it's a perspective thing. I don't think legislative rights expansion has a great track record in multi-ethnic democracies. The US court isn't even as activist as India's, and given the millions of people who'd be suffering various harms but for these courts expanding their rights, I think I'll stick my hopes in what has shown practical ability to help, rather than a utopian vision of legislators looking at facts and respecting all citizens equally.
There's nothing particularly twisted or selective in the way the Supreme Court interprets the constitution in most cases. And in cases where it has, it's usually a reflection of gridlock in the legislatures preventing any forward movement despite there being majority support for such an expansion of rights. Till you do something like introduce ranked choice voting/multi-member districts, remove gerrymandering by a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to vote, etc, the Supreme Court is the only way through the legislative logjam.
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. </Quote>
Any belief that these states will permanently elect Democrats is ridiculous anyway. It's not like the GOP and the Democratic party are static. If these states send 4 senators to Congress, long-term the GOP will start looking at ways to win some of those seats.
The good thing is, by being more Democratic, it allows these people's political views to shape the GOP. That's why this is the right thing to do.
Gerrymandering is practiced by both parties, but yes, that's another problem, reducing the minority party's representation in state legislatures. </Quote>
Right. So why again, should the Court not be critical to the Democrats' immediate goals?
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,
Stop right there. What Democratic majority? Roe enjoys majority support in pretty much every poll. Contraception and abortion rights are not minority support positions in the country. Opposition to them is, and the GOP stacked court is a way to lock in those minority positions.
Sure, I can see the similarity. But slavery was a blatant betrayal of the ideals on which the US was founded -
So is denying access to abortion. If you don't have freedom over your own body, what do you have?
<Quote>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. </Quote>
Of course it is. You either have the right to decide whether you want to carry a fetus, or you don't. What's the intermediate?
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. </Quote>
Again, you're assuming Roe is the only thing threatened by a GOP majority in the Supreme Court. That's far from true.
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.
I'm saying that redirecting them to another issue isn't hard, and we've seen proof of that.
- 28/09/2020 06:48:28 PM
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- 25/09/2020 07:55:03 PM
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Been a while since I had one of these exchanges with so many paragraphs...
- 25/09/2020 11:10:16 PM
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You probably guessed that I, uh, can't say the same here.
- 28/09/2020 09:58:09 PM
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- 25/09/2020 06:40:34 PM
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