U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Feticide is a minor offense in the Old Testament compared with murder.

worth clicking through to this thread too:

1/ Can we talk about how problematic Alito’s logic is? Alito reaches back to the 17th c. English Common law to provide a precedent for his decision, but the 17th c. judgments he cites only made abortion a crime if it happened after the child “quickens” or moves (about 20 weeks). pic.twitter.com/VWnvN5XL9r

— Holly Brewer (@earlymodjustice) May 4, 2022

i would like to point out if no one else has

Respondents and the Solicitor General also rely on post-Casey decisions like Lawrence vs Texas and Obergefell vs Hodges. These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one's 'concept of existence' prove too much. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could licence fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.

Number of states where using illicit drugs is illegal: 0
Number of states where having sex with a sex worker is illegal: 0

lol that's a good point

also luv 2 equate abortion with prostitution and drug use, it just makes sense deep down

I'm wondering if there's a typo or I'm missing something

re: who leaked the opinion,

it may actually matter, far beyond the pearl-clutching "the dignity of our institution has been soiled!" take. it may actually, very much, matter, in terms of locking in a decision that wasn't necessarily going to be so broad and terrible.

this is a tpm "prime" article but i have this exclusive share token:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/putting-together-the-pieces-on-the-campaign-to-stop-roberts/sharetoken/ayjTUiKurJV4

it has way too many links and quotations to quote here. the gist is that it was almost certainly a leak from the conservative wing, and that it was likely a part of a power struggle (with history) between Roberts and the other 5 conservatives. Roberts wanted a narrow ruling and was trying to "pick off" another conservative justice to form a majority with the liberal wing. leaking it early short-circuited that strategy and "locked" in one of the worst supreme court opinions of all time

i'm so accustomed to hearing why what i think is completely wrong, so i'll go ahead and agree that yes, if roberts would have been able to narrow the opinion and keep a sliver of Roe alive, life in the 21st century would still completely suck and we would still be on a path toward the more broad ruling that is going to happen instead. however, i think there are degrees of fucking awful, and in this horrible world we should be rooting for the least horrible outcomes

oh, also another way i'm potentially completely wrong - there was no chance of picking off another conservative justice. roberts was completely wasting his time. roberts himself is worse than satan, and there are no differences between him and the other 5 conservative justices. so even me bringing it up is pretty much the dumbest thing i've ever heard

I could see Roberts trying to get the others to sign on to a ruling that doesn't threaten other precedents

Chief Justice John Roberts said in a public appearance on Thursday that the leak of a draft opinion in a major abortion case is "absolutely appalling."

"If the person behind it thinks that it will affect our work, that's just foolish," Roberts added. -- via @Reuters

— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) May 5, 2022

In other words, Roberts is probably still trying to do just that.

being foolish?

First, this thread:

Justice Alito's invocation of Sir Matthew Hale in his leaked majority opinion is so, so much more fucked up than people realize. I'm a professor with a PhD, and my area of expertise happens to be women and gender in the early modern era (1500-1700). Here is what you need to know. pic.twitter.com/MfMSi1g4D2

— Dr. Literature_Lady 💌📚📜🎙 (@Literature_Lady) May 5, 2022

Second, this news story:

https://people.com/politics/indiana-republican-accused-killing-wife-wins-local-primary-jail/

He probably was thinking of Matt Hale of the World church of the Creator but this Matt would do too.

sorry to ask, but what is Rod Derher's take on this. need to keep a pulse on my neighborhood catholics

Castrate the sodomites.

Wait, so when there's a vote on the SCOTUS, does Alito think they should count the female members' husbands' votes?

"How does Justice Mrs. Jesse M. Barrett vote?"

In a bid to demonstrate the respect for women’s rights on the conservative wing of the court, and 10th “honorary” seat will be added so that Ginny Thomas may observe the proceedings and give her perspective

and hopefully choke to death

Castrate the sodomites.

dr literature lady

seems strange to me that some enterprising young antifaer hasn’t decided to shoot one of these assholes yet, though obviously I could neither advise nor condone such an act (hi feds)

How long is the DC media going to pretend that everyone in town isn’t whispering that insurrectionist loon Ginni Thomas leaked Alito’s opinion because Bret Kavanaugh was wavering? There’s one discussion in front of the cameras and another behind.

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) May 8, 2022

^contains some plausible conjectures, but it's still no more than gossip atm

I hate these 'act properly please!' fucks almost as much as I hate the Alito/et al.

I say this as someone who is not a conservative & disagrees with Kavanaugh on a whole lot: Harassing someone outside their family’s private residence is grotesque. It’s not healthy. And it says something that crossing this line is seen by many as virtuous. https://t.co/LVEbxRICpk

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) May 8, 2022

uncle baby billy binion

lol @ reason boy

God forbid they be mildly inconvenienced or annoyed, that's just going too far

Regarding the leak theories, I find it kind of implausible that a fucking Supreme Court Justice would "waver" based on a leak. These are literally the most self-regarding motherfuckers on the planet. All nine of them. You think they're going to change their mind because of what someone might think?

I said upthread I think all this speculation is bullshit, but the "occam's razor" explanation to me is that it was a liberal clerk who was horrified and wanted to warn everyone, not some 4-D chess bullshit.

Seems predictable that people will get upset when you decide to use the power granted to you to uphold the public good to instead take away a constitutionally guaranteed right that has a direct and profound effect on their daily lives.

Imo more ppl should be outside Kavanaugh's house

Protesting at Kavanaugh's house after said house has been reduced to ashes...might be too much. But let's try it and find out first.

Regarding the leak theories, I find it kind of implausible that a fucking Supreme Court Justice would "waver" based on a leak.

The way I understand it, it’s the other way around - the point of the leak is to prevent wavering, rather than to cause it. The idea is that when the particulars of the opinion aren’t known, there’s room for negotiating, persuasion — chances of opinion, as it were. But once the majority opinion is public, in the extreme Alito form, it makes it (the idea is, I think) more difficult to modify that extreme opinion in a way that preserves maximum face saving (which, despite of their ultimate tenure jobs, seems to be the most important function of a sc justice)

Only a movement that disrupts business and property can reverse this.

Just a reminder: because of non-proportional representation and demographics: in order to break the filibuster and overcome the R+6-7 bias in the Senate, Democrats would need to win 3 straight elections by 19 points to make abortion legal nationally. 1/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) May 9, 2022

I'm feeling this:

One of the consequences of the myth of indispensable men — the graveyards are full of them — is that we tolerate positions of extreme social power and importance being held by single individuals for absurdly long periods, because these people will supposedly be so difficult to replace.

This is of course ridiculous: the merit myth is just that. While Sotomayor has been an excellent justice, there are, conservatively speaking, tens of thousands of people who would also be excellent SCOTUS justices. Indeed thousands of them are Hispanics, and in a nation where within another decade or so one out of every five Americans will be Hispanic, it should be considered unacceptable for the Supreme Court not to have at least one Hispanic justice, which obviously has profound consequences regarding the question of who should replace Sotomayor on the Court.

Ideally, of course, we would have a legislative scheme that would require justices to take senior status from the Court after a reasonable number of years, while ensuring that they were selected to the Court in the first place in a more rational manner than the current haphazard non-system. Proposals limiting justices to 18-year terms, guaranteeing that each president gets two nominations per presidential term would accomplish this goal directly, while indirectly ensuring that, demographically speaking, the Court not look like the late-stage Soviet politburo.

But such reforms are extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future, meaning that we will need to depend on informal norms rather than formal laws to get individual justices to do the right thing.

It’s an overwhelming moral imperative, under our present system, that progressive justices retire strategically. For pragmatic reasons, it would be best if SCOTUS justices didn’t serve for the ridiculously long terms that have become standard in recent decades, and that they retired before all the perils of our current gerontocratic practices became evident in their individual cases.

Who among us couldn't imagine a multitude of reforms that would make our system more responsive to the needs of ordinary people, but which will never happen because it removes power from those unwilling to relinquish it.

How long is the DC media going to pretend that everyone in town isn’t whispering that insurrectionist loon Ginni Thomas leaked Alito’s opinion because Bret Kavanaugh was wavering? There’s one discussion in front of the cameras and another behind.

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) May 8, 2022

People are protesting outside Justice Kavanaugh's house. Someone said "But think of his neighbors" and Kavanaugh's neighbor replied "We ARE his neighbors. We organized the protest"

— Chad Loder (@chadloder) May 8, 2022

loool awesome

Brett Kavanugh neighbor/ Rand Paul neighbor 2024

i read a bit about that neighbor protest the other day. as of then, it was kind of sad because it really was just his next-door neighbor, and apparently none of the other assholes in the community would stand with her. many were opposed, pearl clutching shit, but also many were of the "well i'm not going to participate myself but i won't stop you" at best, while others thought it was inappropriate (probably worried that they'd be the next target, because everyone in that neighborhood is probably a gigantic asshole. so instead it was kind of a sad portrait of the only neighbor willing to lay something on the line, alone. but maybe more neighbors have joined since then

It means they don't get invited over for the monthly Kavanaugh keggers.

*curtains move and shape of the golden boy appears from a second floor window. he is clearly mouthing the words "I like beer!"*

Oh wow. The Lancet — one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world — is out with a forceful statement about Roe v. Wade *on the cover*. pic.twitter.com/foqLq4DWic

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) May 13, 2022

“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” So begins a draft opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, leaked from the US Supreme Court on May 2, 2022. If confirmed, this judgement would overrule the Court's past decisions to establish the right to access abortion. In Alito's words, “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives”. The Court's opinion rests on a strictly historical interpretation of the US Constitution: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” His extraordinary text repeatedly equates abortion with murder.

The Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has been the main foundation underpinning the right of American women to an abortion. That 1868 Amendment was passed during the period of American Reconstruction, when states’ powers were being subjected to certain limitations. The goal of the Amendment was to prevent states from unduly restricting the freedoms of their citizens. That guarantee of personal liberty, so the Supreme Court had previously held, extended to pregnant women, with qualifications, who decided to seek an abortion. Alito rejected that reasoning. He argued that for any right not mentioned in the Constitution to be protected, it must be shown to have had deep roots in the nation's history and tradition. Abortion does not fulfil that test. Worse, Roe was an exercise in “raw judicial power”, it “short-circuited the democratic process”, and it was “egregiously wrong” from the very beginning. It was now time, according to Alito, “to set the record straight”.

What is so shocking, inhuman, and irrational about this draft opinion is that the Court is basing its decision on an 18th century document ignorant of 21st century realities for women. History and tradition can be respected, but they must only be partial guides. The law should be able to adapt to new and previously unanticipated challenges and predicaments. Although Alito gives an exhaustive legal history of abortion, he utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion. Unintended pregnancy and abortion are universal phenomena. Worldwide, around 120 million unintended pregnancies occur annually. Of these, three-fifths end in abortion. And of these, some 55% are estimated to be safe—that is, completed using a medically recommended method and performed by a trained provider. This leaves 33 million women undergoing unsafe abortions, their lives put at risk because laws restrict access to safe abortion services.

In the USA, Black women have an unintended pregnancy rate double that of non-Hispanic White women. And the maternal mortality rate for Black women, to which unsafe abortion is an important contributor, is almost three times higher than for white women. These sharp racial and class disparities need urgent solutions, not more legal barriers. The fact is that if the US Supreme Court confirms its draft decision, women will die. The Justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion. Alito and his supporters will have women's blood on their hands.

The 2018 Guttmacher–Lancet Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights For All concluded that these rights, which included the right to safe abortion services and the treatment of complications from unsafe abortion, were central to any conception of a woman's wellbeing and gender equality. The availability of an essential package of sexual and reproductive health interventions should be a fundamental right for all women—including, comprehensive sexuality education; access to modern contraceptives; safe abortion services; prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases; prevention and treatment for gender-based violence; counselling for sexual health; and services for infertility. What kind of society has the USA become when a small group of Justices is allowed to harm women, their families, and their communities that they have been appointed to protect?

The route forward is unclear and perilous. This Court's argument suggests possible future attacks on a raft of other civil rights, from marriage equality to contraception. Despite urgent pleas from some members of Congress, the long-overdue encoding of Roe into law by the Biden administration is highly unlikely. That a Court is about to force through a health policy supported by only 39% of Americans is dysfunctional. Indeed, if the Court denies women the right to safe abortion, it will be a judicial endorsement of state control over women—a breathtaking setback for the health and rights of women, one that will have global reverberations.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00870-4/fulltext

impressive

The Supreme Court's second and final opinion of the day is Cruz v. FEC. By a 6–3 vote, the court strikes down a federal law prohibiting post-election contributions to repay a candidate's personal loans to their campaign. All three liberals dissent. https://t.co/GKuHtkwILe

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 16, 2022