Condemning people for what, in your imagination, they might do in the future?
I predict that will not turn out to have been a good prediction.
SCOTUS has a history of not completely affirming or overturning a previous decision. What they tend to do is modify or adjust, effectively postponing a decision to another court or term. So my guess is they will allow some chipping away at abortion rights for now – possibly by permitting states to make limited rules. This principle allows SCOTUS to pass the buck, and claim they didn’t permit or prohibit anything, so don’t blame us.
The argument some justices may be making (think Kavanaugh et al) in the current (2021) case, where they suggest that the Supreme Court should step back and let “the people” decide (a dog whistle for states’ rights) reminds me of Goldwater 1964. He argued, in Conscience of a Conservative, that states’ rights should take precedence over federal/national ones, even if the result was undesirable, i.e., local, legal, racial segregation.
Do you buy things from China?
If it’s “broadly popular” then why is there so much controversy over it, and why have so many states passed laws contradicting it?
Care to update your opinion?
Same reason as single payer health care, I guess.
As for the topic, I wonder what would happen if someone directly said to the conservative justices that overturning is expected of them, because that’s why they were put on the court to begin with, the more powerful the better? Usually, such a thing wouldn’t happen, but with Trump…
Thank god Breyer is just as self centered as Ginsburg and values his career more than the people who are affected by the courts decisions. When the court is 7-2 maybe we’ll lose medicare too.
Because one party has determined that they can stay in office and make more money by catering to the whims of a minority that is afforded a disproportionate amount of electoral power by our pre-industrial pro-agrarian system of government.
Agreed. I just read the oral argument and it seems as if Roberts is looking for a narrow opinion that is summarized thusly: Roe dealt with an absolute prohibition on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Casey upheld Roe, but had nothing to do with viability. A fair reading of Roe and Casey shows that the viability portions of the opinions are mere dicta and not subject to stare decisis. The holding of Roe and Casey are that states must provide a choice for women to electively terminate their pregnancies. Mississippi has done that here by allowing all women up to 15 weeks to make that choice. Therefore Roe and Casey are not implicated, and we do not reach the question of overruling them today.
It does seem to have gained any traction from anyone. The rest of the justices and all parties are saying, “Nope, it’s all or nothing here.”
Guessing is always dangerous, but Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are all nearly for certain votes to overrule Roe and Casey. Barrett is very likely so, but did not show her cards today; she only kept repeating the line that safe haven laws have undercut Casey’s rationale that women are forced to rear children. I thought her point was neatly parried by the response that even during Roe and Casey, adoption was a viable alternative, and safe haven laws, though requiring less effort on the part of a woman who has just given birth to rid herself of an unwanted child, is not so much different to require a different result. But Barrett kept repeating it nonetheless. I think Barrett is a solid vote to overrule Roe and Casey.
I think in the end, Roberts is a vote to overrule as well. The result of his position is untenable to all. There is no principled result that allows for a “meaningful choice” or some other such language to replace the viability standard. First, even if he contorts it in a uniquely Roberts way to say it complies with stare decisis, it is unworkable. As others in this thread have stated, if 15 weeks is good, what about 14? 13? 12? 8? 6? Is he really going to argue or leave for a future case to make that decision, and on what rule will it be based? And how is that rule based in the Constitution? Somehow the Constitution will say 10 weeks is okay, but 9.9 is not? His new test will be just as arbitrary as the viability line he dislikes and would not have the minimum stare decisis backing it up that the viability line has.
So I think Roberts is drug into the majority by the simple fact that his overwhelming historical desire to please coastal Republican liberals while maintaining plausible conservatism is just not available to him here. I expect a looooong concurrence from him with caveats and reluctance and praise for the Court and his “understanding” about what the majority really means. But he’s on board.
My prediction: 6-3. Barrett, a woman, writing the opinion joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts in part. A very gracious opinion to the other side. Roberts concurring. Thomas concurring, but not gracious. Sotomayor dissents in what will be the most contemptuous dissent in history, joined in full by Breyer and Kagan, each of whom write separate dissents with Breyer’s being the most judicious.
Roe and Casey are relegated to the ash heap of history where they rightfully belong. Fifty years of a judicial travesty is enough.
The same Amy Coney Barrett that suggested banning abortion is fine because adoption exists, or argued forced pregnancy is like vaccines?
Until everyone is a required donor for any full or partial transplants that may be required, how about we stop telling women how to use their uteruses?
Is there an option for a justice to abstain? Then Roberts could wash his hands of the matter and it would be 5 conservatives overturning Roe, 3 liberals upholding, and one guy abstaining.
Must all nine vote?
Why the hell would they do that? The last thing you want to do is try to placate your base who is angry and motivated as fuck. (Especially since they won’t be placated, and you’ve just become their enemy.)
What I expect is trying to harness the anger over this, calling out the obvious politicization of the Supreme Court, fanning the flames to get out the vote in the midterms (which would normally be depressed), promising to undo the tragedy with a federal law—which they can only pass if they hold onto the House and get a few more Senate seats to override those who won’t nuke the filibuster.
Problem, of course, is that Republicans will use the same rallying cry. And that, once the filibuster is nuked, laws are less stable that Supreme Court precedent. So we’d also need to completely ungerrymander and break the voting system. That way the fact that the majority of the country thinks abortion should be legal and up to the woman and her doctor might actually fucking matter.
I’m actually not sure why you think a federal law would be better, let alone how the Democrats would pitch it as better.
I think it depends which “conservative powers” you mean. I suspect that what might now be called the “old Republican” powers that be might well have seen it as Ashtura believes. But the new Trump-era Republicans are different. The old Republicans raised, and rode, a tiger but the tiger is full grown now and is no longer under their control.
I think that what is happening is exactly what the supposed “old guard” wanted all along. They didn’t have the guts to do it themselves, so they step aside for plausible deniability and reap the benefits brought to them be the supposedly incontrollable Trumpettes.
If I could totally avoid Chinese products I would. But this is about so-called fellow Americans. I’m sick and tired of this 160+ year old argument of states vs feds. It was decided by a lot of blood. We’re in a country first, a state second.
What’s next? Overturn the Emancipation Proclamation?
How excited can we get about the possibility of Congress protecting abortion, knowing the same extremist, partisan, Federalist-captured SCOTUS will probably strike down that law as well? (Assuming of course there’s ever a liberal majority on Congress again).
There will probably be one news outlet that helps you feel good about this take. Some people will be voicing it as a coping mechanism. But if the sources I’m reading are any indication, we’re done trying to read much in the way of silver linings in this bucket of turds.
Right? I mean, protecting abortion is not one of the enumerated powers. There was no federal power that could protect it – Roe made it a fundamental right under implied privacy rules. If Roe goes, that right goes away. Maybe there could be a federal law making it legal to transport someone to another state to get an abortion? But, protecting abortion itself is not something that this SCOTUS would see as a valid use of federal powers.
Not that I expect any consistency, but three of the conservative justices found that Congress has the ability to regulate abortion, when they upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in Gonzales v. Carhart. (Although Clarence Thomas did hint in a concurrence that he thought that the commerce clause rationale for the law was bogus.)
What about the precedent that underpinned these decisions? Should we expect some states to outlaw contraception next?