I feel like most of the rest of us were already going to “burn in hell for all eternity.”
Is there really no pleasing these people ?
It is really difficult to overstate how obsessive the Christian right is about abortion. Banning abortion is not a “states’ rights” issue to them. It’s abortion, and punishing people for it is all that matters. States’ rights is irrelevant to the abortion issue; if they can ban it at the criminal law level, their next move will be a Constitutional amendment banning it.
Oh they won’t, but they have a lot of other things they want.
Republican campaign officials are probably not excited about this news, if only because the midterms couldn’t have been shaping up much better for them prior to the leak. It adds a bit of uncertainty to an election they’d rather use to beat Biden and Democrats over the head with inflation, gas prices and crime.
I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I don’t foresee the Court overturning Roe being sufficient to counteract the midterm curse. Leaking it now means that it won’t have the same shock value in November that it would have if the Court had issued this in the summer. It also may goose Republican turn out even higher – I’m sure part of the Republican message will be that we need a Republican Senate to ensure Biden can’t appoint a screaming liberal justice who will undo what’s likely to be a 5-4 decision.
It looks like the right is blaming the left for the leak.
Just spitballing here.
You know how the Americans announced the Russians were going to pop a nuke? Since their plans were made public, the Russians backed off. Someone called it “preveling.”
Imagine this being the same thing. Someone is preannouncing the decision6y78 to make the Court feel the heat early and maybe back off.
I don’t really think that Russia story is correctly stated for one thing…
Well, there are a whole slew of primary elections coming up very soon. I’m not sure if this will affect those though. Too short a time and besides…it’s a primary so unless there is a moderate(ish) and a fringe candidate it probably will not have much effect. Not sure.
Supposedly the Supreme Court was going to release this decision in late June. I am not sure being leaked two months early changes much either.
In short, politically, I am not sure the leak changes anything. Come November a lot of the outrage will have lost steam. If the states are smart they will wait until November before completely outlawing abortion in their states. On November 9, they can go nuts.
The only effect I can maybe see it having is changing the Supreme Court’s mind on the decision. I doubt that lot ever changes position but that is the only hope for the leak I can think might happen.
It sounds like Cruz is upset because someone said the quiet bit loud.
Why would this energize one party more than the other? Just asking — I don’t have an strong opinion on the politics here, other than that the polls show median voters want to find a middle ground.
Another question I have — not addressed to any particular poster — is why it is claimed to be a bad thing for the Supreme Court to leak. Unlike with the other branches, there is no national security angle. I guess it would be more dignified if there was a formal policy of them releasing drafts on their web site, rather than it being done in a disorganized fashion.
If the last paragraph sounds weird — I believe In open government.
P.S. And what is energize? Am I to believe that there are people who often don’t vote and now will? Or is it about fundraising?
It’s also been theorized that a Republican leaked in in an effort to lock five Republican justices in to staying the course to not look weak. Who the hell knows.
This would be a fantastic idea.
The Supreme Court is our court of final appeal for essentially all subordinate courts in the country, since they can also hear appeals of decisions from the State courts, this even applies to all of the fifty State courts, the various territorial courts etc.
A significant portion of the court’s work is not actually that political, they are often working in complex areas of law that don’t easily map to our culture-war oriented political system in 2022. The way the Supreme Court has always worked–and all the justices say this, left right etc, is with an atmosphere of collegiality. They argue, but they are colleagues, they generally are all on decently friendly terms.
In many cases all the justices really have to do is vote on a decision and little more, but the many decisions and opinions they write that often have the concurrence of a very large number of justices–sometimes all of them, are generally seen to be improved by this atmosphere of collegiality.
In a sense the judiciary is our most open top level branch of government. Why? Because in most cases they provide a detailed explanation and justification for what they are doing. This is rarely the case with legislatures–who often outright lie about their motivations, other times intentionally hide key elements of the bill from the public (by crafting long and complex bills that are not regularly reported on in full.) The same can be said of the executive branch, while some rulemaking committees have some obligation of explanation, not all do, and the President often makes decisions without any explanation at all.
A lot of this collegiality is facilitated by the Justices being able to discuss matters candidly, as legal professional, in closed sessions. This way the political elements of our society are not lobbying them after every conference, every meeting.
If Justices don’t feel that they can discuss things candidly and confidentially with their colleagues, it essentially will undermine the collegiality of the court. The liberal and conservative justices will stop meeting, stop discussing, the quality of opinions will decrease and many decisions will simply be the result of two hostile camps inside the court voting and little more.
Some believe we are basically on a path to that already–I’m frankly one of them, several of the firebrand conservative justices are far more involved in outside “conservative political movements” than has been the norm in most of our recent history, and it seems deference for the old ways is dying.
I do want to point out though–the court has always been inherently political, and politicizing and political activism by justices didn’t start in the 1990s or 2000s, but goes back 200 years.
However, we did have a mostly collegial court from the era of Taft’s Chief Justiceship until present, but the signs are that is going away.
No idea if this will energize dems but midterms are very low turnout and there’s plenty of people who typically sit them out who could be reached.
Not a call to action. Just a link in case you want to say something.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/politics/abortion-rights-voicemail/index.html
(CNN)If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, how would that impact you and your community? Please leave us a voicemail at [deleted for SDMB post] and let us know your thoughts. Each voicemail can be three minutes in length. It may be used by CNN on television or online as part of our coverage. Please include your name, contact information and where you’re calling from. Thank you for weighing in on this important issue.
Michigan is one of those 26 states, but I guarantee its two senators are pro-choice, as it’s it’s governor.
The only reason Michigan will outlaw abortion is roe is flipped is because its law banning abortion pre-dates roe, and it was never taken off the books. The governor plans to appeal to the state sc, which (iirc) currently leans left.
I don’t think that is a correct analysis.
The highest political body in the EU is the European Council, composed of the heads of state/government of the member nations. Those individuals are elected by their home countries, through their own election processes. Each member state’s head of govt/head of state is a member of the European Council, which has a general high level political control, including the power to appoint the President of the European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU. If you were applying US analysis, that is as if the governor of each state was a member of a super-body that got to appoint the President of the United States and set general policy directions for the US.
There is also the Council of the European Union, which has one seat for each member of the EU. Those seats are held on a rotating basis by subject matter, by the relevant cabinet ministers from each member-state. In US terms, that would be as if the Secretaries of Agriculture from each state were part of the federal government for agriculture issues, the state Attorneys General were part of the federal government for justice issues, and the state Treasury Secretaries were part of the federal government for financial matters, and so on. The Commission’s approval is necessary for an EU law to pass, which in American terms, would be as if each state had a role in the federal legislative process. As well, for the Council to pass a bill, it has to meet a double majority: the vote has to represent 55% of the member states, with 60% of the population. That is a stricter standard than in the US Congress, where matters can pass without having members who represent 60% of the US population.
Then there’s the European Parliament, which is the only part of the structure directly elected by the people of each country, on a population basis, not on a country by country basis. Although it has a legislative role, it only has the power to approve or reject laws proposed by the European Commission, which is chaired by the President, who is appointed by the governments of each country, as mentioned above. The European Parliament cannot itself initiate legislation, which is much different from the powers of the US Congress, which has complete power to introduce legislation as it sees fit.
Finally, on the legislative process, the parliaments of each member state have a role. If enough national parliaments object to a proposed law on the basis that it intrudes too much on their own powers (ie infringes the principle of subsidiarity), they can slow the legislative process down and force the EU bodies to re-examine the proposed law. That would be as if the state legislatures could hold up statutes being considered by the federal Congress.
Overall, then, the EU structure provides significantly greater roles for the member states than the US Constitution ever has for US states. Because of the power given to the member states, they have a much greater control over EU measures than is the case for the US states. ONe of the main goals of the drafters of the US Constitution was to create a central government which was independent of the states, with a strong federal legislature, a strong federal executive, neither of which were subject to the states. The US federal government has always been stronger than the EU government.
(Saying this to add to your informative post, not disagree with it)
The bedrock of EU law and its power base is still a set of treaties between its member states. When the EU has to change something fundamental about its legal structure it requires a treaty change and thus unanimity from member states.
The ratification of the constitution was arguably a treaty with similar dynamics, but it established an actual central government that could largely define for itself what its powers were, with the limits in nearly all cases being that a supermajority of states has to approve a constitutional amendment.
Interesting point. Like PhillyGuy, I thought that leaking wasn’t inherently a bad thing in the case of Supreme Court gestating decisions — but your post convinced me that it can have negative consequences.
Which is why Madison insisted on state conventions to ratify the Constitution, not ratification by the state governments. Ratification by the state governments could be seen as a treaty, that the state governments could abandon if they wished. Ratification by state constitutional conventions was ratification by the people of the United States, as set out in the Preamble.
As you say, the EU is a treaty system, where each member state has equal power to stay or leave, unlike the US constitutional system.
Exactly. If you can’t trust your colleagues, why would you share your opinions with them?