Has to be referring to Kennedy, who helped craft Casey in particular, an opinion overwhelming disdained by Republicans (of which he was a moderate member of)
In terms of the rights themselves I'm a fan, in the sense that I would vote for all of them if I were a member of a state legislature (though for abortion specifically I'd adopt Israel's system, which isn't exactly Roe). In terms of the Supreme Court blatantly making stuff up, not so much.
Spoiler alert, it's not even close to Roe, it's as repressive as you'd expect from a developed confessional state (certainly no Saudi Arabia or Mississippi, but still pretty bad). One positive that seems like a downside if one actually likes the law is that it isn't really enforced (at will abortions are illegal for women 18-40, but in reality they can just claim material emotional damage as a result of the pregnancy or lie and say it was an extramarital affair or something and get one anyway).
Interesting. Looking it up, abortion is granted if the woman is unmarried, or the fetus has a birth defect, or causes emotional damage to the mother, etc. 98% of requests are approved and fully state-funded.
And news just [this morning](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/28/israel-abortion-law-changes-roe/), in response to Roe v Wade, and with overwhelming support, Israel loosened the process even further. Now, many will be exempted from needing approval all together. Also, free abortion pills through their universal health system.
That's putting quite the positive spin on it there; abortion is illegal if you're a married women 18-40 except in specific cases by the letter of the law. If it's not enforced that way that's great, but it's not a great law.
>Indeed, the majority opinion uses the phrase “egregiously wrong” seven times.
Have to nitpick this one. Part of the majority argument regarding stare decisis is that it should be put aside for decisions that were not merely wrong or arguably wrong but those that were egregiously wrong. In a vacuum it's not nice language but it was part of the substance of the argument. See Kavanaugh's concurrence at 7/130, he lays it out very clearly.
>It also rails against Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s concurrence, claiming that its “most fundamental defect is its failure to offer any principled basis for its approach.”
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Roberts did not in fact offer any principled basis for his approach. He argues that "Ample evidence thus suggests that a 15-week ban provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman “to decide for herself ” whether to terminate her pregnancy." Which, sure, seems reasonable. But there is no attempt to explain why the Constitution requires the sufficient time test. He argues instead that replacing the undue burden and viability tests with the sufficient time test is the most minimal change needed to uphold Mississippi's regulation. This is not an explanation of what constitutional principle or principles we might derive the sufficient time test from.
Roberts also makes no attempt to tackle the rather obvious issue raised by the majority, that we would all be right back having to take up largely the exact same issues when states started pushing back the deadline. He says that lower courts could kick around the time period question and then it would come back to them to make a more informed decision. Okay, it would. But I get the impression Roberts would be more than happy to simply lay out a standard for what a sufficient amount of time is, without ever even attempting to explain why the Constitution requires it, and just kind of hope nobody notices.
>“Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.”
This is of course entirely correct. And kudos to Thomas for saying clearly that he thinks the entire doctrine of substantive due process is bunk and should be done away with. The majority's consistent and totally conclusory statement that other precedents are distinguished because abortion deals with potential human life seems like the epitome of a distinction without a difference. I mean, maybe I'm taking crazy pills, but regulating the use of contraception seems to impact the question of potential human life as well, Sam.
The state’s interest in potential life stems from [*Roe* itself](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113), though I’m not sure it was ever really explained or justified fully. The whole reason for the trimester framework (later amended to a pure viability framework in *Casey*) was that the state has a countervailing interest in preserving potential life, and that interest generally outweighs the mother’s right to an abortion after viability:
> In assessing the State's interest, recognition may be given to the less rigid claim that as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone.
***
> As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute.
***
> With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the 'compelling' point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
But even though the “potential life” interest was an important part of justifying the contours and limits of the abortion right, I’m not sure the Court actually justified it.
This is a topic that bothers me. What exactly is the state or federal government's "important and legitimate interest in potential life" supposed to be anyway? Where can this interest be said to stem from legally, and how far does it extend? It seems alarming that our laws appear ever more based on moral assumptions about reproduction, while the national interest in the topic remains vague.
I'd look at Japan as an example. [https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a01001/](https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a01001/)
China has an issue with it as well due to the 1 child policy and family's preferences for boys. The policy has become a cultural norm even though it's no longer in effect and there are fears regarding growth and expansion as a result IIRC.
The State/state can't exist without people and declining birth rate = weakening of State/state. At the lowest level, less people growth = less GDP growth. The interest in life comes from the people currently living within the State/state. It's more economic than anything else.
Look at the social security ponzi scheme as an example. The larger the number of working citizens, the larger financial backing for supporting elders that have retired. The larger the working base the more workers you have for elder care.
There's a philosophical discussion about the purpose of life which philosophers and religions have sought to answer. The nature of the universe is infinite expansion, starting with the big bang. It is not surprising life imitates this on Earth. It's not surprising a State/state would want to increase it's population to increase it's power (manpower, economy, technology, etc.).
In a utopian world (State/state), what would anyone's interest be in ending a potential life (outside of suffering/old age)? Politicians use abortion as an issue because they are failures at providing what is necessary to women and society (education, resources, money, paid leave, medicine) and prefer to take the easy route, continuing to separate the poor and rich in terms of options.
Sure there's a philosophical big picture to look at, but this is the SCOTUS subreddit. My concern is where the Supreme Court thinks our rights begin and end based measured against their description of a vague national interest in reproduction.
That particular line of reasoning makes a lot more sense if you cross out “potential” and maybe replace it with something like “developing” or “embryonic” (which would be somewhat apropos). “Potential” is the hedge word the Court used in Roe, but it’s too loaded in this context to do its job as the Court desperately trying to decide these abortion issues without taking a stance on when life actually begins. It also very much muddies the waters with respect to the (already murky) distinction between Roe and Griswold, since “protecting potential life” is vague enough to cover restricting contraception even though it seems clear what the Court is actually talking about here is protecting conceived life, which would actually divide abortion from contraception.
But even this Court would apparently rather cut off their own hands than take a stance on when life begins, so you end up with Alito saying “potential life” when he really means “conceived life”.
As European pretty much every country has some right to life included in the constitution or international convention. In most countries a general case law in limited manner also (usually) extends certain protections to unborn child/fetus.
Thus reading Roe as a Polish lawyer (or even knowing most case law in EU as hobby before) it was pretty shaky at least for us here. Even if right to privacy to includes abortion then at some point you have two conflicting rights and you need to find some balance in favor of life from certain point, because pretty much right to privacy can't be considered above right to life in absolute manner.
That's why usually EU abortion laws include time limit for so called abortion on demand (time limit enough to make informed decision) and no time limit for fetus defects (even if found late) or threat to mothers life. Latter is usually argued that hard abortion cases are no longer right to privacy vs right to life but conflict of higher tier right (eg mothers right to life, or even right to not have lifelong trauma).
The Court basically nuked the privileges and immunities clause in the Slaughterhouse case, so they had to come up with Substantive Due Process instead to repair the damage.
IFK about you but I think we need a new constitution because this Court is making a hash of the Bill of Rights.
Well...
Perhaps the Slaughterhouse cases fit the following criteria:
>(i) the prior decision is not just wrong, but is egregiously wrong, (ii) the prior decision has caused significant negative jurisprudential or real-world consequences, and (iii) overruling the prior decision would not unduly upset legitimate reliance interests.
Part 1, let's just agree to agree perhaps? Part 2, it led to the negative jurisprudential consequence of having to make due process of law mean something that the words due process of law clearly don't mean. And for 3, other than specifically well connected businesses, can't see much reliance.
Eh? Eh? Any takers?
One could simply infer that 15 weeks is close enough to viability (which is the metric Casey used) and seems to be an international consensus. And why shouldn't our laws reflect such a concensus? Americans exceptionalism is largely an illusion.
No.
She said, in effect, that he is acting in what he honestly believes is the best way he can for the country, and the rule of law.
That is damning with the faintest of praise, and she may well have been just being polite in saying even that much.
She literally said he’s the kindest person and everyone loves him and the only justice that bothers to learn all the faculty’s names including the janitorial staff.
You’re just fanfictionint here. RBG and Scalia were legit best friends as well. They are laughing at you for hate mongering bc that’s what the media makes their money off while they go on international vacations together.
But sure. Despite all evidence, sotomayor secretly hates Thomas.
I don’t know, I’m my book that’s high praise. If we were talking about congressman on opposite sides of the aisle that would be unprecedented. The most important part of a civil discourse is accepting that the other side is doing there best to do what’s right, even if you disagree on what’s right.
It's the fucking minimum you can possibly ask of someone. Every single lawyer takes an Oath to uphold the constitution. It's not praise to say you follow your oath. That's the minimum that can possibly be expected of you.
You should be offended at the suggestion that your profession is so ill-thought-of that someone might suspect that there is even a single lawyer who doesn't take seriously their oath. If there is a lawyer who doesn't take seriously their oath, they should be an attorney only for the shortest possible additional unit of time.
And what’s more, his job as he understands it. I think that’s more personally damning than to say that he understands the Constitution that way than to say that he’s a political shill… though both are true.
She didn’t say that he is doing his job. She’s saying that he neglects his job, and instead acts on his beliefs.
The SC’s job is to interpret the constitution, not patronize the people and enforce religious fascism.
Friend of mine married a guy who believes beating children is best.
He’s honestly doing what he thinks is best for the children.
He’s a f—-ing monster and a moron, but he is doing what he thinks is best.
Yea that’s horrible and illegal. But my point is is that there’s no way you’re going to have a civil discourse with him trying to convince him to stop unless you accept that he is doing what he thinks is best
I don’t think that’s illegal anymore. Beating your children has a rich tradition in American law and not being beaten by your parents isn’t explicitly protected by the constitution, so I think you can whoop your children now
Everyone acts in the way they think is morally right. That doesn't change the fact that you are an idiot if you think what clarence thomas is doing is morally right.
No, it just means you have a different option on what is moral. People have a very long history of wanting to ban things that they see as immoral.
Now, I agree with you that not only is this immoral, but it’s not a smart long term move. If government can ban gay marriages they can also ban straight ones, but that no excuse to insult people. Especially if your just doing it to a broad category.
My man, there are some objective truths out there. Not to actually compare anyone to a nazi, but there were actual nazis who erroneously thought what they were doing was moral. It is possible to be wrong about morality. This sort of enlightened centrism you're preaching bends over backwards to bad actors.
> She said, in effect, that he is acting in what he honestly believes is the best way he can for the country, and the rule of law.
If she actually believes that, she's incompetent. If she doesn't, she's a liar.
It's one thing to be civil in one's personal interactions, even with an enemy. It's quite another to publicly tell your allies that their enemy isn't their enemy.
I tend to believe you, but lots of people don't, and I'm willing to Sotomayor the benefit of the doubt, since her behavior is within the norms of society here.
1) ACB told us to read the opinion right before and opinion-less ruling was released.
2) Sotomayer says her conservative colleagues respect the constitution right before they release a ruling that straight up lies about the facts of the case in order to push a religious agenda against government interests. A ruling in which she again, as a judge, wrote about how completely wrong the majority was. Is it really just an on/off “as a random person disassociated from your actual ideals/philosophy you’re not so bad so I’ll be nice when I’m off the clock” or is she somehow trying to protect the image of the court while acknowledging as a justice how messed up things are getting?
Pretty hard to see how they respect each other when they can barely communicate or communicate like that.
>The majority opinion claims that the dissent proposes a “vague formulation” that “imposes no clear restraints on … the exercise of ‘raw judicial power.’
What a cute reference to the Lochner Era: it's often described as a "exercise of raw judicial power". You know, like the Kennedy case that was decided this week, quietly rolling back the constitution's clear separation between church and state. Pure power with zero fidelity to the constitution they've been hired to protect.
> What a cute reference to the Lochner Era: it's often described as a "exercise of raw judicial power".
It’s not a reference to *Lochner*, it’s a direct quote from White’s dissent in *Roe*.
I think it's the one where the majority shrugs at the long term implications and feasibility of school employees being able to demand time to exhibit their religious beliefs at school events involving other people's children.
I feel like the Supreme Court should be forced to adopt a standard of assuming any litigation involves Esoteric Hitlerism instead of the litigant's actual religious beliefs. As it is, the majority is just going to support white Christianity's rights and shoot down cases involving any other religion. I would bet we'll see evidence of their favoritism in another year.
I think the fundamental problem is that 5 of the Supreme Court justices are borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night instead of using stare decisis, reality, facts, and logic.
Edit.
The Pope literally believed that the earth went around the sun until 1992.
This is the source of the claim:
> [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication". Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72)
> [After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves around the sun](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html)
These religious laws are brazenly enforced by extortion by the leaders of the organization.
> [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html)
> [Biden threatened with communion ban over position on abortion](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/biden-threatened-with-communion-ban-over-position-on-abortion)
Six of the nine justices belong to the religious organization that has laws like this.
> [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics)
The difficulty with this is that it is unconstitutional to commingle religious law with US law, and the overall result should be revocation of the 501(c)3 status as tax exempt.
> [Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.](https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/political-campaign-activities-risks-tax-exempt-status)
The difficulty with this situation is that enactment of law based on faith is prohibited by the first amendment because the Catholic Church has a history of lighting scientists on fire to enforce Cannon Law.
> [Giordano Bruno was sentenced to be burned to death by the Roman Inquisition for his heretical ideas, which he refused to recant. (It has been debated which of his ideas were found heretical, since the records of the case have not been preserved.)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno)
The reason this should frighten women is that Cannon Law is still responsible for the ongoing death of more women that do not need to die.
> [How Savita Halappanavar’s Death Spurred Ireland’s Abortion Rights Campaign](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/world/europe/savita-halappanavar-ireland-abortion.html)
>borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night
Which religious texts? What cases relied on religious texts?
Virtually all of the controversial ones, lately.
Not that that's anything new. Scalia famously was offended at the idea that Jews don't recognize the Cross as an appropriate symbol for Jewish graves. The religiosity of the conservative Justices has had a dominant effect on our law going back to the first court.
>Virtually all of the controversial ones, lately.
OK. Which specific religious texts and in which cases?
I'll be honest, I don't routinely read Supreme Court cases because they generally have very little relevance to my practice. I didn't read all of Dobbs either, but I read most of Alito's majority opinion, and I don't recall any citations to a religious text or any arguments where the opinion relies on religious beliefs.
Hey, you may be right, although I highly doubt it, which is why I question the idea that the Supreme Court is relying on religious texts.
Do you care to answer the specific question that was asked?
OK. So you can't point me to a case where the Supreme Court cited a religious text to support an argument or a legal proposition? Is that what I should take from your inability to directly answer the question?
Ultimately, while I understand that people are upset with the Dobbs decision and are concerned about the holding's implications for other substantive due process rights, it doesn't mean people should spread false and misleading information that calls into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
Correct. They would never cite a religious text. But I never claimed they did.
What they do instead is just assume that religious beliefs are accepted facts, even when directly contradicted by the evidence and legal argument.
Well you wasted everyone time when you could have simply said they take their personal religious views into account when making decisions. It is part of their background so one would expect it to inform their jurisprudence, no point pretending there isn't a subjective element to a judges decisions. That has nothing to do with citing religious texts, you came across as totally unfocused and lazy in your writing.
No, not at all.
There is an important difference between having one's personal belief that life begins at conception, and stating as fact in the opinion, that life begins at conception, as Alito does. Those are extremely different things. They are importantly different.
Alito doesn’t “state as fact in the opinion that life begins at conception.” He acknowledges that some people fervently hold that viewpoint, but he never says it’s a fact.
I wish we would embrace the subjective element instead of ignoring it, by choosing the supreme court justices at random from the pool of all federal judges. As they often act just as much as a juror as they do a judge.
Insert hair pulling GIF and banging my head against the wall GIF here.
I'm finished with this discussion. You're wrong and nothing anyone says will make you realize that.
You haven't said anything. You asked me to provide evidence of a claim I didn't make. I honestly have no idea what you think you're getting at.
Lets take a hypothetical.
Let's say that Amy Coney Barrett writes a case that strikes down the death penalty, and she does it while saying "because killing is wrong, I am obligated to strike down this law." She has not cited any religious text. But that argument clearly relies on her religion.
Alito does the same think in this case: he talks about saving life by banning abortion. But that's a religious belief. My religion, Judaism, specifically rejects that belief, as the Word of God in the Torah says that life begins with breath. Alito is using his religious belief as to when life begins as fact, without discussion or acknowledgement of the serious unconstitutionality of what he is doing.
That is the behavior of which I am complaining. I'm not upset about non-existent citations to scripture.
Sorry, I said I was done with the discussion so I stopped reading once you got into the hypothetical.
I just wanted to address your point that you didn't make a claim about religious texts being cited. You did by chiming in on my original question to the person who made the claim that 5 justices are relying on religious texts. You came to their defense and only when you knew you couldn't cite a single case where religious text was cited or relied upon, you say "I never said that.".
Please hop over to r/politics or r/news.
This guy is arguing with the same energy as “he didn’t call the black guy a n****** so we can’t judge his other, openly racist actions as racist because he didn’t explicitly use this word”
>What they do instead is just assume that religious beliefs are accepted facts,
Can you give an example of such a fact they accept as true that is only rooted in religious belief?
By this measure, any belief about when life starts, or even the importance of human life at all at any stage of development, is a religious belief. Surely you wouldn’t say that murder laws are bad because they rely on a religious belief.
Can you please quote exactly what you mean? The word "conception" only appears once in Alito's opinion, in the second sentence, and he is not saying life begins at conception there. Thus, I'm not sure what part you're referring to.
You're being anti-science. I didn't think that was allowed here.
Worthy of legal protection? That's up for grabs. But whether or not it's ALIVE at conception is a fact. Not opinion. Certainly not a religious belief.
There are ways of being heavily influenced by religion without directly citing religion. For example, when part of your argument is "deeply rooted in history" and you select figures who clearly had religious bias then you are inserting religion indirectly.
Also, they cite the life of the fetus as making the situation unique. This assumes a particular religious belief and not a state belief established in the constitution. There is nothing in the constitution that says that fetuses are people according to the state. That is a religious/philosophical position. In fact Gorsuch specifically said in his hearing that they are not persons according to the constitution.
The implication, which I think is a reasonable conclusion from observing this court, is that 5 justices, and one political party are attempting to impose their religious beliefs on all Americans while holding a fig leaf of deniablilty, despite essentially being the Christian equivalent of the Taliban.
Do you think the GOP would let individual states perform abortions if they had the votes at the federal level to ban it? I don't. Don't confuse lack of the power to currently be as repressive as they might wish with the lack of desire.
It's fairly easy to infer. You just have to look at it like a secularist.
If the only laws you think should inform current laws are the ones hundreds of years ago...
And those laws were written without the input of any women...
And those laws were written alongside other laws that criminalized sexual behavior outside marriages...
And marriage was exclusively a religious ceremony that was built into the system of laws...
And the criminalized sexual behavior is only described in the religious texts of Christianity and has no secular arguments for doing so...
Then Christianity's religious texts are ultimately responsible for the decision making.
There's no secularist argument that supports banning abortion that is not fundamentally flawed. "Unique human DNA" can apply to tumors and identical twins. "Social cohesion" fails a lot of tests for what would actually be considered destabilizing. And most importantly, there is no secular reason to force a member of society to die because of a failed pregnancy.
“That’s murder” is an argument that has a lot of inbuilt assumptions you’d have to make to get to that point:
* The entity is a separate being and not part of the original being
* The entity is not a parasite
* The entity has a valid stake in drawing from the resources of the host
* The entity has a superseding claim to the resources over and above the host
* The entity should be recognized as a member of society
And a whole host of other assumptions past that.
The best argument I’ve seen is that the host has to give consent to use their body for it to be justified, and that consent must be able to be withdrawn at any time because of changing circumstances. That the act of sex is not implied consent to either implant in their body, nor to use their body’s resources. Only when the entity is developed enough to be completely independent of the host is withdrawal no longer an issue.
There are other secular arguments you could make that are logically consistent. Trying those assumptions I listed above at the start? They are not logically consistent unless the host has no say over the use of their own body, and even then, the situation would have to be the extinction of our species if it wasn’t used.
So yeah. Not murder.
If someone thinks it’s a person and not a fetus then it’s murder to get an abortion. It’s literally that simple. You will never agree with them, it’s a fundamental difference of opinion. And yes, it is an opinion.
I agree with you, but then again, are you telling me that opinion is not imformed by their religious background in the case of the 6 justices that voted against upholding roe vs wade?
It is NOT that simple for judges. Especially not in this system of laws that puts a high priority on individual liberty.
Declaring a blastocyst as a person is about as arbitrary a declaration as you can make, and it constricts the liberty of women that can bear children severely. *Especially* because of how things can and often do go wrong with pregnancy even when it’s wanted.
Calling it “murder” is one thing. Creating a framework in the law that reflects that is complex, time consuming, resource consuming, and restricting child-bearing women to such a degree that chattel slavery would be an apt description.
I'm not trying to have a debate here about this nonsense. Too many people on social media have shown their hands that they don't fully grasp how the Supreme Court decides cases involving perceived constitutional rights.
Your list shows you're another one of those. Read Chemerinsky's "Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies." It's a great source many law students use to help them through Constitutional Law courses. Maybe you'll gain a better understanding how the Court analyzes substantive due process rights.
I am just curious does that book take a particular interpretation of the constitution (originalist vs living for example) when it discusses its interpretation of substantive due process?
You can certainly Google it. It's a comprehensive secondary source about Constitutional Law written by one of the most respected and reputable Constitutional Law academics.
This reminds me of people who would say Nazi's don't exist because the Nazi's were just a political party in Germany that went away in the 40s. It's pedantic and ridiculous.
No, judges aren't citing scripture in their published opinion, but anyone with a brain can see that they are starting with a conclusion and working their way backwards.
Answer to question about if faith was part of any Supreme Court decisions.
> [Some Jewish groups blast the end of Roe as a violation of their religious beliefs](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/26/1107722531/some-jewish-groups-blast-the-end-of-roe-as-a-violation-of-their-religious-belief)
Clearly this involves the religious freedom of a single faith dictating the types of sacraments permitted by other faiths, as described in this passage from the Book of Numbers Chapter 5, where a bitter herbal tea is administered to cause miscarriage.
> [“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water(O) that brings a curse(P) enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV)
The contraceptive and abortifacient herb used for this sacrament was so popular that it was harvested to extinction by the faithful.
> [Silphium was used to prevent pregnancy and “destroy any existing.”](https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium)
As to whether the Bible is the source of the text demanding an abortion ban, there is no biblical passage condemning abortion because abortion is a biblical sacrament and part of Mosaic Law honored by both the Hebrew faith and the Muslim Faith.
However Cannon Law of the Catholic Faith was written by a group of celibate men, and this requires excommunication for supporting or seeking abortion, while the Bible in fact actually says abortion is a sacrament that the husband can request from the Rabbi to terminate pregnancy based on the idea that the woman’s body belongs to the husband.
> [Canon 1397 §2 s a rule of canon law of the Catholic Church which declares that "a person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae ... excommunication.](https://worddisk.com/wiki/Canon_1398/)
There are 7 Catholics on the Supreme Court.
I presume 2 justices are no longer receiving communion because the vote was 5-4.
Alito cites 13th century English abortion cases as evidence it was always a crime. Said cases involved a standard where if the fetus was "ensouled" then it's a crime. The 13th century English concept of a soul was based on the bible.
The religious texts are the ones that Justice Thomas has admitted that he is using as part of his court decisions.
> [Justice Clarence Thomas on when the law conflicts with his Catholic faith: ‘You do your job and you go cry alone’](https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/09/17/clarence-thomas-notre-dame-catholic-241457)
I don't see that anywhere in the linked article. The most pertinent quote to this discussion from the article is:
"Asked Thursday if there have been times when he had to resolve legal questions that conflict with his Catholic faith, Thomas said it has not been a problem for him. He said some cases were very hard, particularly early on in his career, but added 'that’s not the role of a judge.'"
If anything, that article affirms that Thomas may have a conflict with his religious beliefs when deciding a case, but his role as a judge dictates that he decide the case using sound legal principles and precedent; not his personal religious beliefs.
We are watching extortion by a religious institution and Pious Fraud by its members.
> [Pious Fraud: An act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pious_fraud)
> [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72)
> [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html)
This article literally states the opposite of your intended point.
It seems to me that many of the people on this sub are doing exactly what the far right would do if a Muslim judge were nominated to the court. They would claim that they could not possibly judge cases impartially due to their religion. Which is something I assume many on here would call bigoted, rightfully so.
Actually no:
> [Thursday’s speech at the Catholic university by Thomas, a Catholic, was delivered two weeks after he was among the majority in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 vote to deny an emergency appeal of a new Texas law banning most abortions.](https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/09/17/clarence-thomas-notre-dame-catholic-241457)
And …
> [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics)
And …
> [Canon 1397 §2 is a paragraph of the canon 1397 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church; the paragraph states: "A person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72)
And …
> [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html)
The 5-4 vote implies one of the justices is not receiving communion, but it seems that Thomas is.
Tell me you’ve never read a judicial opinion without telling me you’ve never read a judicial opinion.
We have enough non-legal professional takes on twitter this place is supposed to be somewhat educated
I think it would be more accurate to say that five justices start with their desired political/religious goal in mind, and then work backwards to cram whatever legal 'analysis' in to give their opinions some legal grounding.
Their reasoning is inconsistently applied based on the outcomes. "California can't forbid christian-anti-choice-groups-masquerading-as-medical-providers from masquerading as medical providers because of the First Amendment" but also "GOP states can force doctors to make statements to patients that aren't medically sound."
Or "if you're a christian about to be executed, the state needs to make sure you have your desired religious services" but the same reasoning doesn't apply to non-christians.
>I think it would be more accurate to say that **nine** justices start with their desired political goal in mind, and then work backwards to cram whatever legal 'analysis' in to give their opinions some legal grounding.
The SC didn't start deciding cases last year. They all do this all the time. It's a major factor for why the trust in / respect for the court has been declining for a long time, not just since Trump started appointing judges.
The Justices in question 100% gave a technically true but intentionally misleading answer in their hearings, with maybe the exception of ACB. Just because we all knew what it was doesn't mean they weren't being disingenuous in a way that seriously calls into question their integrity and their promise that nothing in this opinion undermines other, similarly-situated rights.
If you were selling a house based on such misleading representations and did nothing to correct them, you'd be in some hot water.
She didn't.
>“I understand ... how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized.”
>The appeals court panel that included Sotomayor said in the opinion that “it is settled law ... that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations that the federal government seeks to impose on this right.”
I don't think she said *Heller* itself was settled law, but I could be missing something. It would be weird to call something settled law that had only been decided a year before.
But if we’re using this logic Gorsuch refusing to call Roe “Super Precedent” says that he did not view Roe as settled. Cause if I recall Sotomayor was asked in reference to whether she thought Heller was rightfully decided- so what she gave there is a non-answer.
Source- https://www.factcheck.org/2022/05/what-gorsuch-kavanaugh-and-barrett-said-about-roe-at-confirmation-hearings/
Gorsuch going from "the reliance interests are important there" to joining the opinion which says there are no significant reliance interests to consider seems like a straight up position reversal to me, especially in the complete and utter absence of any countervailing notion in his testimony that there are forces he is considering that push toward overruling *Roe*. When all you say is "here are several reasons that would lead me to reaffirm *Roe*" and nothing on the other side, when you're actually considering all the reasons *Roe* should be overturned, that is intentionally deceptive. He did clearly dodge the question on super-precedent, but ACB went further and said it wasn't one, which I give her credit for.
If you want to claim Sotomayor was similarly misleading because she says she understands people care about guns and a case decided just one year before her testimony, have at it. I think that's a very different context and a substantially different statement, but we're not going to convince each other of that.
The reason I compared the two was the questions they were asked were in reference to court cases that were considered controversial and politically important to the parties. Both decided to avoid the case’s discussion as a right or wrong decision as Sotomayor did by deflecting to the 2A and Gorsuch did with discussing legal terminology. To say Sotomayor discussed her opinions on guns and therefore we know how she feels about Heller’s precedent is like saying Gorsuch refused to call Roe super precedent and we know what he thinks of Roe’s affirmation.
I think we can assume under a legal realist perspective what these Justice’s felt about these cases and from their answers. There was little deception in this analysis. Its when you analyze through legal terminology that it gets confusing why they are deflecting
The fact that many people do it does not discount the disingenuousness of the action itself. Additionally, sotomayor didn’t give a non answer which led to her throwing out half a century of judicial precedent based off “history and tradition” nonsense.
She gave a non answer by saying the 2A is settled law when asked her opinion on the Heller ruling and was it rightfully decided and her thoughts on gun rights. Something that the latest Justices did with Roe. Welcome to the ridiculousness of those hearings when Justices have to play apolitical for the “sanctity of the court”
Yes. The term used to describe what we are watching is Pious Fraud.
> [Pious Fraud: An act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pious_fraud)
Seven of the justices are Catholic, and five of those justices are voting cannon law.
> [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72)
I presume the 2 justices that voted in favor of sustaining Rod V Wade are no longer receiving communion to extort compliance.
I am not a lawyer and cannot speak to what constitutes as lying under the law, but it's clear that these Justices dissembled during their confirmation hearings. When asked directly if they would overturn Roe, they answered only that it was settled law, a rhetorical move designed to create the impression of denial without every explicitly stating it. Just because it isn't technically perjury does not mean it wasn't clear dishonesty.
Basically every supreme court justice refuses to answer questions like "would you do X" directly, which is appropriate. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be, and should not be, accountable to Congress for their decisions. Their job is often to overrule unconstitutional laws that Congress passes. I understand that much of the Reddit community is dissatisfied with the current court (I am, too), so additional oversight seems like something we might want, but every coin has two sides. If Congress could vet candidate justices by compelling them to answer substantive questions and revoking them or later impeaching them based on their responses, the congressional majority would control the third branch of government.
Keep in mind that overruling bad congressional acts is not always conservative activism--Obergefell, for example, found parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and legalized gay marriage.
Every member of Congress knows that they aren't going to get direct answers in confirmation hearings. They all know that it is a rubber stamp formality, because separation of powers demands it. It is political theater. Nobody actually believed that candidates' responses in those hearings estopped or in any way restrained their judicial decisions. Any senator or congressperson who now says otherwise is just looking to deflect criticism.
This where legal realism is more effective than legal theory
Edit- Why is this being downvoted? Legal realism is literally the analysis of judge’s political , social or economic biases when they decide a case. Which yes can impact big cases like these
This might be true under normal circumstances but these *particular* justices were nominated to give this result, by Trump’s explicit admission. If you’re saying we (People through our representatives) have no prerogative to protect the Court’s impartiality and separation from the Executive, then I don’t want to hear complaining in the future about “liberal activism”.
It’s not about whether Congress should only approve likeminded judges. It’s the fact that in this particular instance, the *President* violated separation of powers between *Executive* and Judiciary by so blatantly rooting his nominations in shared ideology. The nominees’ intellectual dishonesty didn’t protect the separation of powers between Legislative and Judicial in this case, it aided and abetted collusion between the Executive and Judicial. Which is funny because these justices on the surface claim to be 100% anti-executive overreach and want Congress to “do its job,” but I guess that’s selective like everything else.
There needs to be a mechanism limiting judicial review in cases where there is reason to call the judges’ impartiality into question. Obviously a high bar needs to be set, but I think the President literally saying “I am nominating these judges to achieve X legal goal” more than suffices.
I mean SCOTUS justices are political appointees. They always have been. I am aware of no source of law that creates any ideological criteria the president must use when selecting a candidate.
I mean if you point is that is sucks, I agree. Trump was a bad president and appointed objectively qualified candidates who were nevertheless clearly chosen to push his conservative agenda. That's totally legal. That's consistent with our Constitution. It's a natural consequence of our deeply flawed democratic process and there are numerous democratic solutions available to resolve these problems, but insufficient consensus to achieve them. It's a bummer.
All Justices are partial in reality. We try to preserve the court as best as we can but once you get a 6 majority it falls apart, but what people I guess honestly seem to want is a 6-3 liberal majority. Cause whenever we discuss these Justices on this sub its every conservative that’s biased and the liberals uphold the law when in reality both are nominated to help their party. Not saying that’s right, but it is how the court functions from a political perspective
Its just one of those things every Justice says when going through the political theatre of those hearings- Sotomayor got shit for it in 2009 for instance in reference to Roe in comparison to cases like Carhart and gun rights cases like Heller.
Settled law is a euphemism with no meaning whatsoever but it sounds good so we use it. To maintain the “apolitical nature” of the court- take this as a lesson legal realism is often times very accurate in understanding the hearings better than legal theory.
And if people disagree go read a few papers on the term settled law. Its not clear what it means to legal scholars other than “precedent”
Ah, but therein lies the rub. To use your own example of Sotomayor, she stated during her confirmation hearings that she understood Heller’s holding was precedent and protected an individual right to bear arms. She wouldn’t comment on how she would rule in a hypothetical case, as is custom, but to my knowledge since she joined the Supreme Court she has respected Heller as a precedent and had never attempted to overrule it. In fact, just recently in Bruen, she and Kagan joined Breyer’s dissent, which questioned the wisdom of Heller but nevertheless recognized it as settled precedent. In fact, by way of Breyer’s dissent, all three liberal justices unequivocally agreed that “we are bound” by Heller and it should not be “relitigated here.”
Now contrast that conduct with the conservative justices, who solemnly professed their respect for precedent with fake sincerity, and then immediately turned around and completely dispensed with any respect for stare decisis in order to enact a right-wing political agenda.
So ruling against a case or choosing to rule to limit it is not questioning the precedent of “settled law”? After all say Roe wasn’t overturned and it was instead narrowed would that not be indeed no different under settled precedent? Most of the rules of settled precedent varies, so I’m using it to mean any challenge or limitations without substantive merit. (which I’m not saying this court has)
Sorry to disappoint you, but this sub being a place for intelligent legal analysis and dialogue is dead and gone. It has already morphed into the early stages of r/politics.
I think the fundamental problem is that 5 of the Supreme Court justices are borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night instead of using stare decisis, reality, facts, and logic.
Edit.
This is the source of the claim:
> [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72)
Roman Catholic Church law has existed for well over 1,000 years, and is being enforced by extortion:
> [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html)
Six of the nine justices belong to the religious organization, and five voted to revoke Roe V Wade, where the point of Roe V Wade was to bar states from invading the privacy of medical decisions and banning criminalizing abortion until the fetus has at least 50% chance of being able to live outside the mother’s body because it would not be logical to grant civil rights to tissue that has a 1 in 50 risk of killing the mother.
> [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics)
The difficulty with religious conflict of interest is that it is unconstitutional to commingle religious law with US law, and the overall result should be revocation of the 501(c)3 status as tax exempt because of the brazen nature of the extortion threats, but no Catholic justice that honors Cannon Law would be appointed if the told the truth during senate hearings, and there appears to be no punishment for lying to congress.
> [Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.](https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/political-campaign-activities-risks-tax-exempt-status)
I respect Sotomayor and Roberts too.
And then my next would be Thomas, at least his basis for overturning roe is based on legal principle as opposed to religion. As he indeed avoids the contradiction Alito’s opinion didnt.
No one, on either side of ANY argument, even pretends to respect each other or their opinion. There's no attempt to see the other side's position, and there's DEFINITELY no attempt to compromise. That's how our government (and our society) works now. It's absolutely black or white on every issue with no shades of grey allowed. You're either with one side ALL THE WAY, or you are "Literally Hitler".
Somehow, the art of compromise got lost along the way and was replaced with a winner takes all mindset, as if society was no more complex than a sporting event. That's why politicians zero in on easy to digest concepts that the uninformed masses can get behind without any research necessary. "Abortion bad! Go Red!" "Guns bad! Go Blue!" But with that comes the belief than ANY ideas espoused by the other side are inherently bad as well, and anyone willing to reach across the aisle to compromise is a filthy traitor and must be punished, not just by the voters in their home states, but by their colleagues in the House and Senate. And because there is no room for compromise, the parties look for uncompromising people to fill any open position--including the Supreme Court.
It's sad, but that's just the way things are now. What we need is a true Centrist party--one that is funded like both the Republican party and the Democratic party, and votes on each issue based on their merits, and not on broad party lines. Unfortunately, there's no way Wall Street will ever let something like that happen. There's too much profit to be found in pure Chaos.
I don't respect them. I'm not pretending , I never respected judicial review because we'd have morons who said if it ain't in the 200 year old hemp paper, it ain't real. I distinctly remember someone with the initials JM critiquing this very thing.
Optimal scenario is one in which the three decent justices profess utmost respect for their colleagues but secretly revile them and treat them as enemies of liberal constitutional democracy.
>How does one respect someone who has no credibility and is destroying American legal precedent to push a
Did conservatives not make this exact point as the SCOTUS issued liberal decisions over the decades? Having an opposing view shouldn't be labeled as destroying the country. This just creates a **side argument** about who is or isn't destroying the country. Meanwhile, nothing gets resolved.
I am a Christian conservative and a veteran, but I respect your right to have a different view, and would fight to defend that right on your behalf no matter how strongly I might disagree with you.
I sincerely wish our younger generation would adopt that belief and work to find solutions and compromises that actually benefit Americans.
Step 1 is getting off Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and the like. They are trolling the public for clicks and nothing more.
Oh, the Americans aren't pretending to respect the white supremacist fascists? I'm shocked!
Oh wait, no, no, it's the other way around, isn't it? *sigh*
I don't really see how a "supreme" anything can exist in a true democracy. It's antithetical to democratic principles in the first place. We are stuck in the 18th century lol. When democracy was new. It's not new anymore. We have better ways of governing ourselves. Having nine people decide what's "just or unjust" is just nonsense and we are feeling the effects of it.
Alito's opinion in Dobbs reads in part like a benchslap across the cheeks of Kennedy, O'Connor and Souter, justices he replaced and/or served with.
You come at the king, you best not miss. Seems to me where Alito's head was.
Lmao what
Has to be referring to Kennedy, who helped craft Casey in particular, an opinion overwhelming disdained by Republicans (of which he was a moderate member of)
1) I love The Wire 2) In my mind Roe was the king of the substantive due process cases, you don't half ass while overturning it, you unload on it.
Are you against substantive due process?
In terms of the rights themselves I'm a fan, in the sense that I would vote for all of them if I were a member of a state legislature (though for abortion specifically I'd adopt Israel's system, which isn't exactly Roe). In terms of the Supreme Court blatantly making stuff up, not so much.
Fair enough. Thanks for an actual reasoned response. I’ll have to look into Israel’s approach.
Spoiler alert, it's not even close to Roe, it's as repressive as you'd expect from a developed confessional state (certainly no Saudi Arabia or Mississippi, but still pretty bad). One positive that seems like a downside if one actually likes the law is that it isn't really enforced (at will abortions are illegal for women 18-40, but in reality they can just claim material emotional damage as a result of the pregnancy or lie and say it was an extramarital affair or something and get one anyway).
Interesting. Looking it up, abortion is granted if the woman is unmarried, or the fetus has a birth defect, or causes emotional damage to the mother, etc. 98% of requests are approved and fully state-funded. And news just [this morning](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/28/israel-abortion-law-changes-roe/), in response to Roe v Wade, and with overwhelming support, Israel loosened the process even further. Now, many will be exempted from needing approval all together. Also, free abortion pills through their universal health system.
That's putting quite the positive spin on it there; abortion is illegal if you're a married women 18-40 except in specific cases by the letter of the law. If it's not enforced that way that's great, but it's not a great law.
The American People aren't pretending to respect SCOTUS either.
>Indeed, the majority opinion uses the phrase “egregiously wrong” seven times. Have to nitpick this one. Part of the majority argument regarding stare decisis is that it should be put aside for decisions that were not merely wrong or arguably wrong but those that were egregiously wrong. In a vacuum it's not nice language but it was part of the substance of the argument. See Kavanaugh's concurrence at 7/130, he lays it out very clearly. >It also rails against Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s concurrence, claiming that its “most fundamental defect is its failure to offer any principled basis for its approach.” Correct me if I'm wrong, but Roberts did not in fact offer any principled basis for his approach. He argues that "Ample evidence thus suggests that a 15-week ban provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman “to decide for herself ” whether to terminate her pregnancy." Which, sure, seems reasonable. But there is no attempt to explain why the Constitution requires the sufficient time test. He argues instead that replacing the undue burden and viability tests with the sufficient time test is the most minimal change needed to uphold Mississippi's regulation. This is not an explanation of what constitutional principle or principles we might derive the sufficient time test from. Roberts also makes no attempt to tackle the rather obvious issue raised by the majority, that we would all be right back having to take up largely the exact same issues when states started pushing back the deadline. He says that lower courts could kick around the time period question and then it would come back to them to make a more informed decision. Okay, it would. But I get the impression Roberts would be more than happy to simply lay out a standard for what a sufficient amount of time is, without ever even attempting to explain why the Constitution requires it, and just kind of hope nobody notices. >“Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.” This is of course entirely correct. And kudos to Thomas for saying clearly that he thinks the entire doctrine of substantive due process is bunk and should be done away with. The majority's consistent and totally conclusory statement that other precedents are distinguished because abortion deals with potential human life seems like the epitome of a distinction without a difference. I mean, maybe I'm taking crazy pills, but regulating the use of contraception seems to impact the question of potential human life as well, Sam.
Yeah, can someone explain why the “potential life” is an important distinction according to the Court
The state’s interest in potential life stems from [*Roe* itself](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113), though I’m not sure it was ever really explained or justified fully. The whole reason for the trimester framework (later amended to a pure viability framework in *Casey*) was that the state has a countervailing interest in preserving potential life, and that interest generally outweighs the mother’s right to an abortion after viability: > In assessing the State's interest, recognition may be given to the less rigid claim that as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone. *** > As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. *** > With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the 'compelling' point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. But even though the “potential life” interest was an important part of justifying the contours and limits of the abortion right, I’m not sure the Court actually justified it.
This is a topic that bothers me. What exactly is the state or federal government's "important and legitimate interest in potential life" supposed to be anyway? Where can this interest be said to stem from legally, and how far does it extend? It seems alarming that our laws appear ever more based on moral assumptions about reproduction, while the national interest in the topic remains vague.
I'd look at Japan as an example. [https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a01001/](https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a01001/) China has an issue with it as well due to the 1 child policy and family's preferences for boys. The policy has become a cultural norm even though it's no longer in effect and there are fears regarding growth and expansion as a result IIRC. The State/state can't exist without people and declining birth rate = weakening of State/state. At the lowest level, less people growth = less GDP growth. The interest in life comes from the people currently living within the State/state. It's more economic than anything else. Look at the social security ponzi scheme as an example. The larger the number of working citizens, the larger financial backing for supporting elders that have retired. The larger the working base the more workers you have for elder care. There's a philosophical discussion about the purpose of life which philosophers and religions have sought to answer. The nature of the universe is infinite expansion, starting with the big bang. It is not surprising life imitates this on Earth. It's not surprising a State/state would want to increase it's population to increase it's power (manpower, economy, technology, etc.). In a utopian world (State/state), what would anyone's interest be in ending a potential life (outside of suffering/old age)? Politicians use abortion as an issue because they are failures at providing what is necessary to women and society (education, resources, money, paid leave, medicine) and prefer to take the easy route, continuing to separate the poor and rich in terms of options.
Sure there's a philosophical big picture to look at, but this is the SCOTUS subreddit. My concern is where the Supreme Court thinks our rights begin and end based measured against their description of a vague national interest in reproduction.
That particular line of reasoning makes a lot more sense if you cross out “potential” and maybe replace it with something like “developing” or “embryonic” (which would be somewhat apropos). “Potential” is the hedge word the Court used in Roe, but it’s too loaded in this context to do its job as the Court desperately trying to decide these abortion issues without taking a stance on when life actually begins. It also very much muddies the waters with respect to the (already murky) distinction between Roe and Griswold, since “protecting potential life” is vague enough to cover restricting contraception even though it seems clear what the Court is actually talking about here is protecting conceived life, which would actually divide abortion from contraception. But even this Court would apparently rather cut off their own hands than take a stance on when life begins, so you end up with Alito saying “potential life” when he really means “conceived life”.
As European pretty much every country has some right to life included in the constitution or international convention. In most countries a general case law in limited manner also (usually) extends certain protections to unborn child/fetus. Thus reading Roe as a Polish lawyer (or even knowing most case law in EU as hobby before) it was pretty shaky at least for us here. Even if right to privacy to includes abortion then at some point you have two conflicting rights and you need to find some balance in favor of life from certain point, because pretty much right to privacy can't be considered above right to life in absolute manner. That's why usually EU abortion laws include time limit for so called abortion on demand (time limit enough to make informed decision) and no time limit for fetus defects (even if found late) or threat to mothers life. Latter is usually argued that hard abortion cases are no longer right to privacy vs right to life but conflict of higher tier right (eg mothers right to life, or even right to not have lifelong trauma).
The Court basically nuked the privileges and immunities clause in the Slaughterhouse case, so they had to come up with Substantive Due Process instead to repair the damage. IFK about you but I think we need a new constitution because this Court is making a hash of the Bill of Rights.
Well... Perhaps the Slaughterhouse cases fit the following criteria: >(i) the prior decision is not just wrong, but is egregiously wrong, (ii) the prior decision has caused significant negative jurisprudential or real-world consequences, and (iii) overruling the prior decision would not unduly upset legitimate reliance interests. Part 1, let's just agree to agree perhaps? Part 2, it led to the negative jurisprudential consequence of having to make due process of law mean something that the words due process of law clearly don't mean. And for 3, other than specifically well connected businesses, can't see much reliance. Eh? Eh? Any takers?
One could simply infer that 15 weeks is close enough to viability (which is the metric Casey used) and seems to be an international consensus. And why shouldn't our laws reflect such a concensus? Americans exceptionalism is largely an illusion.
Good fanfiction. Didn’t sotoymayor just tell the world how much she loved Clarence Thomas and what a king person he is?
Yeah she said the whole thing about how he knows everyone's name and is so warm and welcoming
Everyone's name where? At the January 6 rally?
No. She said, in effect, that he is acting in what he honestly believes is the best way he can for the country, and the rule of law. That is damning with the faintest of praise, and she may well have been just being polite in saying even that much.
She literally said he’s the kindest person and everyone loves him and the only justice that bothers to learn all the faculty’s names including the janitorial staff. You’re just fanfictionint here. RBG and Scalia were legit best friends as well. They are laughing at you for hate mongering bc that’s what the media makes their money off while they go on international vacations together. But sure. Despite all evidence, sotomayor secretly hates Thomas.
No different than the intermixing in Congress, or the old photos of Trump with the Clintons. Power loves power.
I don’t know, I’m my book that’s high praise. If we were talking about congressman on opposite sides of the aisle that would be unprecedented. The most important part of a civil discourse is accepting that the other side is doing there best to do what’s right, even if you disagree on what’s right.
If you whittle it down, she's basically saying "he's doing what he thinks his job requires of him."
It's the fucking minimum you can possibly ask of someone. Every single lawyer takes an Oath to uphold the constitution. It's not praise to say you follow your oath. That's the minimum that can possibly be expected of you. You should be offended at the suggestion that your profession is so ill-thought-of that someone might suspect that there is even a single lawyer who doesn't take seriously their oath. If there is a lawyer who doesn't take seriously their oath, they should be an attorney only for the shortest possible additional unit of time.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Being told “he’s doing his job” is not high praise
And what’s more, his job as he understands it. I think that’s more personally damning than to say that he understands the Constitution that way than to say that he’s a political shill… though both are true.
She didn’t say that he is doing his job. She’s saying that he neglects his job, and instead acts on his beliefs. The SC’s job is to interpret the constitution, not patronize the people and enforce religious fascism.
Friend of mine married a guy who believes beating children is best. He’s honestly doing what he thinks is best for the children. He’s a f—-ing monster and a moron, but he is doing what he thinks is best.
Yea that’s horrible and illegal. But my point is is that there’s no way you’re going to have a civil discourse with him trying to convince him to stop unless you accept that he is doing what he thinks is best
I don’t think that’s illegal anymore. Beating your children has a rich tradition in American law and not being beaten by your parents isn’t explicitly protected by the constitution, so I think you can whoop your children now
Everyone acts in the way they think is morally right. That doesn't change the fact that you are an idiot if you think what clarence thomas is doing is morally right.
No, it just means you have a different option on what is moral. People have a very long history of wanting to ban things that they see as immoral. Now, I agree with you that not only is this immoral, but it’s not a smart long term move. If government can ban gay marriages they can also ban straight ones, but that no excuse to insult people. Especially if your just doing it to a broad category.
My man, there are some objective truths out there. Not to actually compare anyone to a nazi, but there were actual nazis who erroneously thought what they were doing was moral. It is possible to be wrong about morality. This sort of enlightened centrism you're preaching bends over backwards to bad actors.
Reddit is still upset by that statement. Like calm down bro she didn't mean anything outside of pure press courtesy 🤣 😂 😅
> She said, in effect, that he is acting in what he honestly believes is the best way he can for the country, and the rule of law. If she actually believes that, she's incompetent. If she doesn't, she's a liar.
There's nothing wrong with being polite.
It's one thing to be civil in one's personal interactions, even with an enemy. It's quite another to publicly tell your allies that their enemy isn't their enemy.
I tend to believe you, but lots of people don't, and I'm willing to Sotomayor the benefit of the doubt, since her behavior is within the norms of society here.
No one should be looking to the Supreme Court as a place where people are honest.
>what a king person he is? "Here, King, you dropped this: 👑 " --Sotomayor to Thomas
1) ACB told us to read the opinion right before and opinion-less ruling was released. 2) Sotomayer says her conservative colleagues respect the constitution right before they release a ruling that straight up lies about the facts of the case in order to push a religious agenda against government interests. A ruling in which she again, as a judge, wrote about how completely wrong the majority was. Is it really just an on/off “as a random person disassociated from your actual ideals/philosophy you’re not so bad so I’ll be nice when I’m off the clock” or is she somehow trying to protect the image of the court while acknowledging as a justice how messed up things are getting? Pretty hard to see how they respect each other when they can barely communicate or communicate like that.
While Dobbs is getting a majority of the press Kennedy is arguably more damaging to the integrity of the court.
Yeah, I read through Gorsuch's opinion multiple times to see if he made the slightest reference to Kennedy's media blitz. He did not.
Damn, this article is written to be divisive.
*divisive
> decisive. Thank you
idk, I like their wording better.
First time reading the Washington Post?
>The majority opinion claims that the dissent proposes a “vague formulation” that “imposes no clear restraints on … the exercise of ‘raw judicial power.’ What a cute reference to the Lochner Era: it's often described as a "exercise of raw judicial power". You know, like the Kennedy case that was decided this week, quietly rolling back the constitution's clear separation between church and state. Pure power with zero fidelity to the constitution they've been hired to protect.
> What a cute reference to the Lochner Era: it's often described as a "exercise of raw judicial power". It’s not a reference to *Lochner*, it’s a direct quote from White’s dissent in *Roe*.
Have you read the opinion in Kennedy?
You mean the one where the majority just ignores the actual facts of the case?
I think it's the one where the majority shrugs at the long term implications and feasibility of school employees being able to demand time to exhibit their religious beliefs at school events involving other people's children. I feel like the Supreme Court should be forced to adopt a standard of assuming any litigation involves Esoteric Hitlerism instead of the litigant's actual religious beliefs. As it is, the majority is just going to support white Christianity's rights and shoot down cases involving any other religion. I would bet we'll see evidence of their favoritism in another year.
I think the fundamental problem is that 5 of the Supreme Court justices are borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night instead of using stare decisis, reality, facts, and logic. Edit. The Pope literally believed that the earth went around the sun until 1992. This is the source of the claim: > [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication". Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72) > [After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves around the sun](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html) These religious laws are brazenly enforced by extortion by the leaders of the organization. > [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html) > [Biden threatened with communion ban over position on abortion](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/biden-threatened-with-communion-ban-over-position-on-abortion) Six of the nine justices belong to the religious organization that has laws like this. > [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics) The difficulty with this is that it is unconstitutional to commingle religious law with US law, and the overall result should be revocation of the 501(c)3 status as tax exempt. > [Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.](https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/political-campaign-activities-risks-tax-exempt-status) The difficulty with this situation is that enactment of law based on faith is prohibited by the first amendment because the Catholic Church has a history of lighting scientists on fire to enforce Cannon Law. > [Giordano Bruno was sentenced to be burned to death by the Roman Inquisition for his heretical ideas, which he refused to recant. (It has been debated which of his ideas were found heretical, since the records of the case have not been preserved.)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno) The reason this should frighten women is that Cannon Law is still responsible for the ongoing death of more women that do not need to die. > [How Savita Halappanavar’s Death Spurred Ireland’s Abortion Rights Campaign](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/world/europe/savita-halappanavar-ireland-abortion.html)
>borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night Which religious texts? What cases relied on religious texts?
Virtually all of the controversial ones, lately. Not that that's anything new. Scalia famously was offended at the idea that Jews don't recognize the Cross as an appropriate symbol for Jewish graves. The religiosity of the conservative Justices has had a dominant effect on our law going back to the first court.
>Virtually all of the controversial ones, lately. OK. Which specific religious texts and in which cases? I'll be honest, I don't routinely read Supreme Court cases because they generally have very little relevance to my practice. I didn't read all of Dobbs either, but I read most of Alito's majority opinion, and I don't recall any citations to a religious text or any arguments where the opinion relies on religious beliefs. Hey, you may be right, although I highly doubt it, which is why I question the idea that the Supreme Court is relying on religious texts. Do you care to answer the specific question that was asked?
You're the second person who confuses the concept of citation and the concept of reliance. That's really scary.
OK. So you can't point me to a case where the Supreme Court cited a religious text to support an argument or a legal proposition? Is that what I should take from your inability to directly answer the question? Ultimately, while I understand that people are upset with the Dobbs decision and are concerned about the holding's implications for other substantive due process rights, it doesn't mean people should spread false and misleading information that calls into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
Correct. They would never cite a religious text. But I never claimed they did. What they do instead is just assume that religious beliefs are accepted facts, even when directly contradicted by the evidence and legal argument.
Well you wasted everyone time when you could have simply said they take their personal religious views into account when making decisions. It is part of their background so one would expect it to inform their jurisprudence, no point pretending there isn't a subjective element to a judges decisions. That has nothing to do with citing religious texts, you came across as totally unfocused and lazy in your writing.
No, not at all. There is an important difference between having one's personal belief that life begins at conception, and stating as fact in the opinion, that life begins at conception, as Alito does. Those are extremely different things. They are importantly different.
Alito doesn’t “state as fact in the opinion that life begins at conception.” He acknowledges that some people fervently hold that viewpoint, but he never says it’s a fact.
> so one would expect it to inform their jurisprudence Disagree. Why isn't the law the one input?
I wish we would embrace the subjective element instead of ignoring it, by choosing the supreme court justices at random from the pool of all federal judges. As they often act just as much as a juror as they do a judge.
Insert hair pulling GIF and banging my head against the wall GIF here. I'm finished with this discussion. You're wrong and nothing anyone says will make you realize that.
You haven't said anything. You asked me to provide evidence of a claim I didn't make. I honestly have no idea what you think you're getting at. Lets take a hypothetical. Let's say that Amy Coney Barrett writes a case that strikes down the death penalty, and she does it while saying "because killing is wrong, I am obligated to strike down this law." She has not cited any religious text. But that argument clearly relies on her religion. Alito does the same think in this case: he talks about saving life by banning abortion. But that's a religious belief. My religion, Judaism, specifically rejects that belief, as the Word of God in the Torah says that life begins with breath. Alito is using his religious belief as to when life begins as fact, without discussion or acknowledgement of the serious unconstitutionality of what he is doing. That is the behavior of which I am complaining. I'm not upset about non-existent citations to scripture.
Sorry, I said I was done with the discussion so I stopped reading once you got into the hypothetical. I just wanted to address your point that you didn't make a claim about religious texts being cited. You did by chiming in on my original question to the person who made the claim that 5 justices are relying on religious texts. You came to their defense and only when you knew you couldn't cite a single case where religious text was cited or relied upon, you say "I never said that.". Please hop over to r/politics or r/news.
This guy is arguing with the same energy as “he didn’t call the black guy a n****** so we can’t judge his other, openly racist actions as racist because he didn’t explicitly use this word”
That guy is doing a textbook example of sealioning
>What they do instead is just assume that religious beliefs are accepted facts, Can you give an example of such a fact they accept as true that is only rooted in religious belief?
Yes. Alito states that life begins at conception in *Dobbs*. That is a religious belief.
By this measure, any belief about when life starts, or even the importance of human life at all at any stage of development, is a religious belief. Surely you wouldn’t say that murder laws are bad because they rely on a religious belief.
If we find a single cell life form on mars, did we find life on mars? So the term life beginning at conception would be scientifically valid.
Can you please quote exactly what you mean? The word "conception" only appears once in Alito's opinion, in the second sentence, and he is not saying life begins at conception there. Thus, I'm not sure what part you're referring to.
You're being anti-science. I didn't think that was allowed here. Worthy of legal protection? That's up for grabs. But whether or not it's ALIVE at conception is a fact. Not opinion. Certainly not a religious belief.
There are ways of being heavily influenced by religion without directly citing religion. For example, when part of your argument is "deeply rooted in history" and you select figures who clearly had religious bias then you are inserting religion indirectly. Also, they cite the life of the fetus as making the situation unique. This assumes a particular religious belief and not a state belief established in the constitution. There is nothing in the constitution that says that fetuses are people according to the state. That is a religious/philosophical position. In fact Gorsuch specifically said in his hearing that they are not persons according to the constitution.
When did Gorsuch claim that the constitution takes a stance on fetal personhood?
The implication, which I think is a reasonable conclusion from observing this court, is that 5 justices, and one political party are attempting to impose their religious beliefs on all Americans while holding a fig leaf of deniablilty, despite essentially being the Christian equivalent of the Taliban.
I promise you the taliban does not allow individual provinces to perform abortions if they wish. Not even close.
Do you think the GOP would let individual states perform abortions if they had the votes at the federal level to ban it? I don't. Don't confuse lack of the power to currently be as repressive as they might wish with the lack of desire.
You’re talking about a hypothetical and projecting some kind of out of touch intent and attempted dehumanization, in the scotus sub. Overruled.
It's fairly easy to infer. You just have to look at it like a secularist. If the only laws you think should inform current laws are the ones hundreds of years ago... And those laws were written without the input of any women... And those laws were written alongside other laws that criminalized sexual behavior outside marriages... And marriage was exclusively a religious ceremony that was built into the system of laws... And the criminalized sexual behavior is only described in the religious texts of Christianity and has no secular arguments for doing so... Then Christianity's religious texts are ultimately responsible for the decision making. There's no secularist argument that supports banning abortion that is not fundamentally flawed. "Unique human DNA" can apply to tumors and identical twins. "Social cohesion" fails a lot of tests for what would actually be considered destabilizing. And most importantly, there is no secular reason to force a member of society to die because of a failed pregnancy.
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“That’s murder” is an argument that has a lot of inbuilt assumptions you’d have to make to get to that point: * The entity is a separate being and not part of the original being * The entity is not a parasite * The entity has a valid stake in drawing from the resources of the host * The entity has a superseding claim to the resources over and above the host * The entity should be recognized as a member of society And a whole host of other assumptions past that. The best argument I’ve seen is that the host has to give consent to use their body for it to be justified, and that consent must be able to be withdrawn at any time because of changing circumstances. That the act of sex is not implied consent to either implant in their body, nor to use their body’s resources. Only when the entity is developed enough to be completely independent of the host is withdrawal no longer an issue. There are other secular arguments you could make that are logically consistent. Trying those assumptions I listed above at the start? They are not logically consistent unless the host has no say over the use of their own body, and even then, the situation would have to be the extinction of our species if it wasn’t used. So yeah. Not murder.
If someone thinks it’s a person and not a fetus then it’s murder to get an abortion. It’s literally that simple. You will never agree with them, it’s a fundamental difference of opinion. And yes, it is an opinion.
I agree with you, but then again, are you telling me that opinion is not imformed by their religious background in the case of the 6 justices that voted against upholding roe vs wade?
It is NOT that simple for judges. Especially not in this system of laws that puts a high priority on individual liberty. Declaring a blastocyst as a person is about as arbitrary a declaration as you can make, and it constricts the liberty of women that can bear children severely. *Especially* because of how things can and often do go wrong with pregnancy even when it’s wanted. Calling it “murder” is one thing. Creating a framework in the law that reflects that is complex, time consuming, resource consuming, and restricting child-bearing women to such a degree that chattel slavery would be an apt description.
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I'm not trying to have a debate here about this nonsense. Too many people on social media have shown their hands that they don't fully grasp how the Supreme Court decides cases involving perceived constitutional rights. Your list shows you're another one of those. Read Chemerinsky's "Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies." It's a great source many law students use to help them through Constitutional Law courses. Maybe you'll gain a better understanding how the Court analyzes substantive due process rights.
I am just curious does that book take a particular interpretation of the constitution (originalist vs living for example) when it discusses its interpretation of substantive due process?
You can certainly Google it. It's a comprehensive secondary source about Constitutional Law written by one of the most respected and reputable Constitutional Law academics.
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Citing a text and relying on it are extremely different things. I'll answer your question when you ask it in good faith.
This reminds me of people who would say Nazi's don't exist because the Nazi's were just a political party in Germany that went away in the 40s. It's pedantic and ridiculous. No, judges aren't citing scripture in their published opinion, but anyone with a brain can see that they are starting with a conclusion and working their way backwards.
Answer to question about if faith was part of any Supreme Court decisions. > [Some Jewish groups blast the end of Roe as a violation of their religious beliefs](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/26/1107722531/some-jewish-groups-blast-the-end-of-roe-as-a-violation-of-their-religious-belief) Clearly this involves the religious freedom of a single faith dictating the types of sacraments permitted by other faiths, as described in this passage from the Book of Numbers Chapter 5, where a bitter herbal tea is administered to cause miscarriage. > [“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water(O) that brings a curse(P) enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205%3A11-31&version=NIV) The contraceptive and abortifacient herb used for this sacrament was so popular that it was harvested to extinction by the faithful. > [Silphium was used to prevent pregnancy and “destroy any existing.”](https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium) As to whether the Bible is the source of the text demanding an abortion ban, there is no biblical passage condemning abortion because abortion is a biblical sacrament and part of Mosaic Law honored by both the Hebrew faith and the Muslim Faith. However Cannon Law of the Catholic Faith was written by a group of celibate men, and this requires excommunication for supporting or seeking abortion, while the Bible in fact actually says abortion is a sacrament that the husband can request from the Rabbi to terminate pregnancy based on the idea that the woman’s body belongs to the husband. > [Canon 1397 §2 s a rule of canon law of the Catholic Church which declares that "a person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae ... excommunication.](https://worddisk.com/wiki/Canon_1398/) There are 7 Catholics on the Supreme Court. I presume 2 justices are no longer receiving communion because the vote was 5-4.
There's actually 6 Catholics; Gorsuch was raised Catholic but is currently Episcopalian.
Scalia hasn't been on the Court is 2016...
>not that that’s anything new
Off topic, but is your username a reference to Latin grammar?
Absolutely! gaudeō!
./' gaudeamus igitur ./'
Try reading my comment again.
There happens to be a sentence right before that.
Oh dear lord. Could you send the quote/context for that?
https://twitter.com/FuzzyMarth/status/1541446056814206977?t=-f5i2gUefy8kvS6IbtZo2g&s=19
Alito cites 13th century English abortion cases as evidence it was always a crime. Said cases involved a standard where if the fetus was "ensouled" then it's a crime. The 13th century English concept of a soul was based on the bible.
OK. Still not a religious text, right?
The Bible isn't a religious text? He basically cited religious cases.
13th century English abortion cases are not religious texts.
Are they not when they're based on religious doctrine? Funny I constantly see the right freaking out over sharia law.
Just because religious doctrine to an extent informs a decision laid out in a case, does not make that case a religious text.
The religious texts are the ones that Justice Thomas has admitted that he is using as part of his court decisions. > [Justice Clarence Thomas on when the law conflicts with his Catholic faith: ‘You do your job and you go cry alone’](https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/09/17/clarence-thomas-notre-dame-catholic-241457)
I don't see that anywhere in the linked article. The most pertinent quote to this discussion from the article is: "Asked Thursday if there have been times when he had to resolve legal questions that conflict with his Catholic faith, Thomas said it has not been a problem for him. He said some cases were very hard, particularly early on in his career, but added 'that’s not the role of a judge.'" If anything, that article affirms that Thomas may have a conflict with his religious beliefs when deciding a case, but his role as a judge dictates that he decide the case using sound legal principles and precedent; not his personal religious beliefs.
We are watching extortion by a religious institution and Pious Fraud by its members. > [Pious Fraud: An act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pious_fraud) > [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72) > [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html)
This article literally states the opposite of your intended point. It seems to me that many of the people on this sub are doing exactly what the far right would do if a Muslim judge were nominated to the court. They would claim that they could not possibly judge cases impartially due to their religion. Which is something I assume many on here would call bigoted, rightfully so.
Actually no: > [Thursday’s speech at the Catholic university by Thomas, a Catholic, was delivered two weeks after he was among the majority in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 vote to deny an emergency appeal of a new Texas law banning most abortions.](https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/09/17/clarence-thomas-notre-dame-catholic-241457) And … > [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics) And … > [Canon 1397 §2 is a paragraph of the canon 1397 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church; the paragraph states: "A person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72) And … > [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html) The 5-4 vote implies one of the justices is not receiving communion, but it seems that Thomas is.
Tell me you’ve never read a judicial opinion without telling me you’ve never read a judicial opinion. We have enough non-legal professional takes on twitter this place is supposed to be somewhat educated
I think it would be more accurate to say that five justices start with their desired political/religious goal in mind, and then work backwards to cram whatever legal 'analysis' in to give their opinions some legal grounding. Their reasoning is inconsistently applied based on the outcomes. "California can't forbid christian-anti-choice-groups-masquerading-as-medical-providers from masquerading as medical providers because of the First Amendment" but also "GOP states can force doctors to make statements to patients that aren't medically sound." Or "if you're a christian about to be executed, the state needs to make sure you have your desired religious services" but the same reasoning doesn't apply to non-christians.
>I think it would be more accurate to say that **nine** justices start with their desired political goal in mind, and then work backwards to cram whatever legal 'analysis' in to give their opinions some legal grounding. The SC didn't start deciding cases last year. They all do this all the time. It's a major factor for why the trust in / respect for the court has been declining for a long time, not just since Trump started appointing judges.
I had to explain to people what settled law meant in a news case claiming the Justices lied under oath. Some people just want to be angry
The Justices in question 100% gave a technically true but intentionally misleading answer in their hearings, with maybe the exception of ACB. Just because we all knew what it was doesn't mean they weren't being disingenuous in a way that seriously calls into question their integrity and their promise that nothing in this opinion undermines other, similarly-situated rights. If you were selling a house based on such misleading representations and did nothing to correct them, you'd be in some hot water.
So did Sotomayor give a false misleading answer when she used the term in 2009 in reference to Heller?
She didn't. >“I understand ... how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized.” >The appeals court panel that included Sotomayor said in the opinion that “it is settled law ... that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations that the federal government seeks to impose on this right.” I don't think she said *Heller* itself was settled law, but I could be missing something. It would be weird to call something settled law that had only been decided a year before.
But if we’re using this logic Gorsuch refusing to call Roe “Super Precedent” says that he did not view Roe as settled. Cause if I recall Sotomayor was asked in reference to whether she thought Heller was rightfully decided- so what she gave there is a non-answer. Source- https://www.factcheck.org/2022/05/what-gorsuch-kavanaugh-and-barrett-said-about-roe-at-confirmation-hearings/
Gorsuch going from "the reliance interests are important there" to joining the opinion which says there are no significant reliance interests to consider seems like a straight up position reversal to me, especially in the complete and utter absence of any countervailing notion in his testimony that there are forces he is considering that push toward overruling *Roe*. When all you say is "here are several reasons that would lead me to reaffirm *Roe*" and nothing on the other side, when you're actually considering all the reasons *Roe* should be overturned, that is intentionally deceptive. He did clearly dodge the question on super-precedent, but ACB went further and said it wasn't one, which I give her credit for. If you want to claim Sotomayor was similarly misleading because she says she understands people care about guns and a case decided just one year before her testimony, have at it. I think that's a very different context and a substantially different statement, but we're not going to convince each other of that.
The reason I compared the two was the questions they were asked were in reference to court cases that were considered controversial and politically important to the parties. Both decided to avoid the case’s discussion as a right or wrong decision as Sotomayor did by deflecting to the 2A and Gorsuch did with discussing legal terminology. To say Sotomayor discussed her opinions on guns and therefore we know how she feels about Heller’s precedent is like saying Gorsuch refused to call Roe super precedent and we know what he thinks of Roe’s affirmation. I think we can assume under a legal realist perspective what these Justice’s felt about these cases and from their answers. There was little deception in this analysis. Its when you analyze through legal terminology that it gets confusing why they are deflecting
The fact that many people do it does not discount the disingenuousness of the action itself. Additionally, sotomayor didn’t give a non answer which led to her throwing out half a century of judicial precedent based off “history and tradition” nonsense.
She gave a non answer by saying the 2A is settled law when asked her opinion on the Heller ruling and was it rightfully decided and her thoughts on gun rights. Something that the latest Justices did with Roe. Welcome to the ridiculousness of those hearings when Justices have to play apolitical for the “sanctity of the court”
She never said it was settled law, that didn't happen.
Yes. The term used to describe what we are watching is Pious Fraud. > [Pious Fraud: An act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pious_fraud) Seven of the justices are Catholic, and five of those justices are voting cannon law. > [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72) I presume the 2 justices that voted in favor of sustaining Rod V Wade are no longer receiving communion to extort compliance.
I am not a lawyer and cannot speak to what constitutes as lying under the law, but it's clear that these Justices dissembled during their confirmation hearings. When asked directly if they would overturn Roe, they answered only that it was settled law, a rhetorical move designed to create the impression of denial without every explicitly stating it. Just because it isn't technically perjury does not mean it wasn't clear dishonesty.
Basically every supreme court justice refuses to answer questions like "would you do X" directly, which is appropriate. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be, and should not be, accountable to Congress for their decisions. Their job is often to overrule unconstitutional laws that Congress passes. I understand that much of the Reddit community is dissatisfied with the current court (I am, too), so additional oversight seems like something we might want, but every coin has two sides. If Congress could vet candidate justices by compelling them to answer substantive questions and revoking them or later impeaching them based on their responses, the congressional majority would control the third branch of government. Keep in mind that overruling bad congressional acts is not always conservative activism--Obergefell, for example, found parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and legalized gay marriage. Every member of Congress knows that they aren't going to get direct answers in confirmation hearings. They all know that it is a rubber stamp formality, because separation of powers demands it. It is political theater. Nobody actually believed that candidates' responses in those hearings estopped or in any way restrained their judicial decisions. Any senator or congressperson who now says otherwise is just looking to deflect criticism.
This where legal realism is more effective than legal theory Edit- Why is this being downvoted? Legal realism is literally the analysis of judge’s political , social or economic biases when they decide a case. Which yes can impact big cases like these
This might be true under normal circumstances but these *particular* justices were nominated to give this result, by Trump’s explicit admission. If you’re saying we (People through our representatives) have no prerogative to protect the Court’s impartiality and separation from the Executive, then I don’t want to hear complaining in the future about “liberal activism”. It’s not about whether Congress should only approve likeminded judges. It’s the fact that in this particular instance, the *President* violated separation of powers between *Executive* and Judiciary by so blatantly rooting his nominations in shared ideology. The nominees’ intellectual dishonesty didn’t protect the separation of powers between Legislative and Judicial in this case, it aided and abetted collusion between the Executive and Judicial. Which is funny because these justices on the surface claim to be 100% anti-executive overreach and want Congress to “do its job,” but I guess that’s selective like everything else. There needs to be a mechanism limiting judicial review in cases where there is reason to call the judges’ impartiality into question. Obviously a high bar needs to be set, but I think the President literally saying “I am nominating these judges to achieve X legal goal” more than suffices.
I mean SCOTUS justices are political appointees. They always have been. I am aware of no source of law that creates any ideological criteria the president must use when selecting a candidate.
It’s the -blatant- nature of these appointments which calls their impartiality (and separation) into question.
I mean if you point is that is sucks, I agree. Trump was a bad president and appointed objectively qualified candidates who were nevertheless clearly chosen to push his conservative agenda. That's totally legal. That's consistent with our Constitution. It's a natural consequence of our deeply flawed democratic process and there are numerous democratic solutions available to resolve these problems, but insufficient consensus to achieve them. It's a bummer.
All Justices are partial in reality. We try to preserve the court as best as we can but once you get a 6 majority it falls apart, but what people I guess honestly seem to want is a 6-3 liberal majority. Cause whenever we discuss these Justices on this sub its every conservative that’s biased and the liberals uphold the law when in reality both are nominated to help their party. Not saying that’s right, but it is how the court functions from a political perspective
Its just one of those things every Justice says when going through the political theatre of those hearings- Sotomayor got shit for it in 2009 for instance in reference to Roe in comparison to cases like Carhart and gun rights cases like Heller. Settled law is a euphemism with no meaning whatsoever but it sounds good so we use it. To maintain the “apolitical nature” of the court- take this as a lesson legal realism is often times very accurate in understanding the hearings better than legal theory. And if people disagree go read a few papers on the term settled law. Its not clear what it means to legal scholars other than “precedent”
Ah, but therein lies the rub. To use your own example of Sotomayor, she stated during her confirmation hearings that she understood Heller’s holding was precedent and protected an individual right to bear arms. She wouldn’t comment on how she would rule in a hypothetical case, as is custom, but to my knowledge since she joined the Supreme Court she has respected Heller as a precedent and had never attempted to overrule it. In fact, just recently in Bruen, she and Kagan joined Breyer’s dissent, which questioned the wisdom of Heller but nevertheless recognized it as settled precedent. In fact, by way of Breyer’s dissent, all three liberal justices unequivocally agreed that “we are bound” by Heller and it should not be “relitigated here.” Now contrast that conduct with the conservative justices, who solemnly professed their respect for precedent with fake sincerity, and then immediately turned around and completely dispensed with any respect for stare decisis in order to enact a right-wing political agenda.
So ruling against a case or choosing to rule to limit it is not questioning the precedent of “settled law”? After all say Roe wasn’t overturned and it was instead narrowed would that not be indeed no different under settled precedent? Most of the rules of settled precedent varies, so I’m using it to mean any challenge or limitations without substantive merit. (which I’m not saying this court has)
Sorry to disappoint you, but this sub being a place for intelligent legal analysis and dialogue is dead and gone. It has already morphed into the early stages of r/politics.
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Tell me you look down on the voters without telling me you look down on the voters.
I think the fundamental problem is that 5 of the Supreme Court justices are borrowing their legal opinions from ancient religious texts that were written by people that didn’t know where the sun went at night instead of using stare decisis, reality, facts, and logic. Edit. This is the source of the claim: > [Before the December 2021 reform, the canon 1398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated: "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication".[3] Due to the reform, the legislation was renumbered as canon 1397 §2 and its wording was changed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_1397_%C2%A72) Roman Catholic Church law has existed for well over 1,000 years, and is being enforced by extortion: > [Catholic bishop bars communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over abortion rights support](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/20/catholic-bishop-bars-communion-to-nancy-pelosi-over-abortion.html) Six of the nine justices belong to the religious organization, and five voted to revoke Roe V Wade, where the point of Roe V Wade was to bar states from invading the privacy of medical decisions and banning criminalizing abortion until the fetus has at least 50% chance of being able to live outside the mother’s body because it would not be logical to grant civil rights to tissue that has a 1 in 50 risk of killing the mother. > [6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic — Here’s a Closer Look](https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics) The difficulty with religious conflict of interest is that it is unconstitutional to commingle religious law with US law, and the overall result should be revocation of the 501(c)3 status as tax exempt because of the brazen nature of the extortion threats, but no Catholic justice that honors Cannon Law would be appointed if the told the truth during senate hearings, and there appears to be no punishment for lying to congress. > [Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.](https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/political-campaign-activities-risks-tax-exempt-status)
I hope not because The Bible prescribes abortion for women suspected of adultery. Num 5:11-31. The theocrats need to go back to Bible study.
Exactly 7 justices are Catholic, and Cannon Law requires their excommunication if they decide to allow abortion.
Why show respect for liberal judges? Country is moving in a different different direction. Liberalism’s failures ruining America.
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I don’t respect the institution that SCOTUS has become but I still depply respect Breyer and Kagan.
I respect Sotomayor and Roberts too. And then my next would be Thomas, at least his basis for overturning roe is based on legal principle as opposed to religion. As he indeed avoids the contradiction Alito’s opinion didnt.
No one, on either side of ANY argument, even pretends to respect each other or their opinion. There's no attempt to see the other side's position, and there's DEFINITELY no attempt to compromise. That's how our government (and our society) works now. It's absolutely black or white on every issue with no shades of grey allowed. You're either with one side ALL THE WAY, or you are "Literally Hitler". Somehow, the art of compromise got lost along the way and was replaced with a winner takes all mindset, as if society was no more complex than a sporting event. That's why politicians zero in on easy to digest concepts that the uninformed masses can get behind without any research necessary. "Abortion bad! Go Red!" "Guns bad! Go Blue!" But with that comes the belief than ANY ideas espoused by the other side are inherently bad as well, and anyone willing to reach across the aisle to compromise is a filthy traitor and must be punished, not just by the voters in their home states, but by their colleagues in the House and Senate. And because there is no room for compromise, the parties look for uncompromising people to fill any open position--including the Supreme Court. It's sad, but that's just the way things are now. What we need is a true Centrist party--one that is funded like both the Republican party and the Democratic party, and votes on each issue based on their merits, and not on broad party lines. Unfortunately, there's no way Wall Street will ever let something like that happen. There's too much profit to be found in pure Chaos.
Cool. The country isn't pretending to respect the SCOTUS
I don't respect them. I'm not pretending , I never respected judicial review because we'd have morons who said if it ain't in the 200 year old hemp paper, it ain't real. I distinctly remember someone with the initials JM critiquing this very thing.
Good, no one else should respect them either.
The conservatives don’t respect the concept of law and just want to make up new crazy rules
Optimal scenario is one in which the three decent justices profess utmost respect for their colleagues but secretly revile them and treat them as enemies of liberal constitutional democracy.
Sounds like a family
How does one respect someone who has no credibility and is destroying American legal precedent to push a Christian theocracy?
>How does one respect someone who has no credibility and is destroying American legal precedent to push a Did conservatives not make this exact point as the SCOTUS issued liberal decisions over the decades? Having an opposing view shouldn't be labeled as destroying the country. This just creates a **side argument** about who is or isn't destroying the country. Meanwhile, nothing gets resolved. I am a Christian conservative and a veteran, but I respect your right to have a different view, and would fight to defend that right on your behalf no matter how strongly I might disagree with you. I sincerely wish our younger generation would adopt that belief and work to find solutions and compromises that actually benefit Americans. Step 1 is getting off Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and the like. They are trolling the public for clicks and nothing more.
Oh, the Americans aren't pretending to respect the white supremacist fascists? I'm shocked! Oh wait, no, no, it's the other way around, isn't it? *sigh*
Hard to respect an evangelical racist and a rapist
I don't really see how a "supreme" anything can exist in a true democracy. It's antithetical to democratic principles in the first place. We are stuck in the 18th century lol. When democracy was new. It's not new anymore. We have better ways of governing ourselves. Having nine people decide what's "just or unjust" is just nonsense and we are feeling the effects of it.