Their primary function was to support the federal courts. The Marshals and their Deputies served the subpoenas, summonses, writs, warrants and other process issued by the courts, made all the arrests and handled all the prisoners. They also disbursed the money. The Marshals paid the fees and expenses of the court clerks, U.S. Attorneys, jurors and witnesses. They rented the courtrooms and jail space and hired the bailiffs, criers, and janitors. In effect, they ensured that the courts functioned smoothly.
Florida didn’t overturn their Alien Exclusion Act until 2018. In California, there was a law prohibiting Asians from owning land. Philip Ahn, the actor who played Master Kan in the “Kung Fu” series, was the first Korean born in the United States, and because he was a native born citizen, he was allowed to own land. So a committee of immigrant Koreans banded together to get him to “own” property in Northern California where they could grow rice.
No–the U.S. Marshals Service is a bureau under the Department of Justice, ultimately reporting to the Attorney General–their arrest powers come from the executive authority of the United States, so they face the some constitutional conundrum any other executive branch office would face arresting the President.
The only police the SCOTUS has is the United States Supreme Court Police, who is overseen by the Marshal of the United States Supreme Court who is appointed by the court itself. However their jurisdiction is incredibly narrow: 40 U.S. Code § 6121 - General | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu)
They can exercise police powers in and around the Supreme Court building, and can provide protective services to the justices of the court, arrest persons attempting to harm said justices, and can provide similar protection to “any officer” of the Supreme Court in the performance of their duties.
Theoretically I guess if the President was on Supreme Court grounds, they could attempt to arrest him for committing a crime, but they are not empowered to enforce warrants for contempt out and about, so it’d have to be some more immediate crime like graffiti or assault. Effecting the arrest would be complicated by the POTUS’s ever-present Secret Service detail, which by itself is bigger than the entire Supreme Court police department, and far better armed.
Now I’m wondering when the last time (if ever) an in-office President entered grounds controlled by the Supreme Court.
I can buy that.
The White House is saying the country is at “serious risk” of a nationwide ban on abortion two days after Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was possible for lawmakers to pursue codifying the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade .
In an interview with USA Today published over the weekend, McConnell said if the draft represented the final ruling, “legislative bodies … certainly could legislate in that area.” As of now, the leaked opinion from the court would allow states to implement their own abortion bans, but it would not ban abortion on the national level.
Yep, knew that was coming.
OTOH, protests should not be outside a personal residence.
FFS.
Just get the votes to make an amendment to enshrine bodily autonomy in the goddamn US constitution— explicitly allow abortion. Don’t pussyfoot around it for 5 decades and try to blame the other guys. Don’t blame Trump, blame Obama, Clinton and all the other “peace in our time” idiots.
If the legislature actually makes laws; precedents in interpretation of absent laws become irrelevant.
And get rid of the traitor judge with the Q-wife anyway, force him to resign or denounce the spouse.
You know how to do that?
You think 3/4 of the states would support that?
I keep hearing 3/4 of Americans support that. Are you guys a democracy or what?
We’re not; we’re a republic. 3/4 of Americans being in favor of something is utterly meaningless since we don’t have national referendums. We need 3/4 of the Senate, or 3/4 of the states.
They didn’t sort themselves into states the way you evidently expect.
Lot of problems with this:
- The United States is not a direct democracy.
- Even if 75% of the country supported something, there is no certainty that they would be concentrated such that they constituted a majority in 38 of the 50 states, because the States have wildly variable population totals. The 10 largest states represent over 50% of the population but only 20% of the…total of states. The top 20 states actually represent 75% of the population, but would still not be enough to pass a constitutional amendment–not even particularly close, you’d need another 18 states. Put differently–13 States can block any amendment. The 13 smallest states combined represent around 14% of the country’s population.
- There is not actually evidence that I’m aware of that 75% of the country supports a national amendment on bodily autonomy with a specific aim to enshrining a right to abortion. A good majority (in the 70s) supports leaving Roe as it is. Some of those people are very against abortion but don’t want to deal with the troubles of criminalization. Some of them are generally fine with abortion at 12 weeks or earlier, but deeply against it after that. Some are fine with abortion on demand at almost any point in the pregnancy. Some are fine with abortion only with specific extenuations like health of the mother, rape, incest et al. In short, there is not a giant consensus on legal abortion other than most people don’t want to see it outlawed. But navigating that prickly political reality would make it difficult to craft an amendment that would clear the barrier of passing 2/3rds of each House of Congress, and then being sent to the States for ratification.
- The list of Democrat politicians you list run the gamut of Democratic positions on abortion, until fairly recently a large section of the Democratic voting base was at least quasi-pro life, in the 90s and 00s many Democrats in high elected office were explicitly pro-life. The previous Senate Majority Leader from the Democrat side before Schumer–Harry Reid, was explicitly pro-life, and he was Senate Majority Leader as recently as the first half of the 2010s. The Presidents you named are not dictators, and have genuinely limited control over their own caucus in Congress, let alone the Congress as a whole.
- The States don’t let people vote directly on amendments, so it isn’t even about getting a majority of voters in each of the States, but a majority of the legislators. A number of people who support abortion rights “don’t care about it that much”, I’ve seen figures as high as 30% for Republicans who are pro-choice, but they are still voting for Republicans who are overwhelmingly a pro-life party. This means they know this and don’t care, and their votes represent votes that are pro-choice but not helping to build Democratic majorities in the various State legislatures.
Since at least 2000, Republicans and the right wing have been loudly declaring that we are “a republic, not a democracy,” and they have been spending their time proving it.
We haven’t even been able to get an amendment to enshrine equality of men and women in the constitution.
The plus side of a field in Utah having a lot of voting power and having your voters bottled up in gerrymandered districts is that you don’t need to move a lot of people (on paper) to flip the script.
The QOP have been whining about voters being bussed around for years- start doing that for realsies- look at the maps ~100.000 people here or there can completely change the color of the map. And there are plenty of regions where you won’t notice 100.000 less D voters.
Provide those people with a little help with the paperwork and you can turn the R’s advantages against them. If they start doing the same: in straight numbers they don’t stand a chance.
You can also start to really bully states that don’t play nice: they have been in open rebellion for years: cut their funding, start those audits.
Make those R voters understand that voting has consequences. (Especially if you’re in regions that are sucking on the federal teat).
That is what you do with unruly children you take away their toys, you withhold their allowance.
3/4 of Americans probably support women having a right to first trimester abortion (and I’ve read that 93 percent of our abortions are first trimester).
But just as the Republican base is determined to outlaw all abortions, the Democratic base would see 93 percent coverage as a terrible defeat. So any Democratic abortion amendment, just like any Repbulcian abortion amendment, would be unable to get the needed super-majority.
We’re an oligarchy that panders to the religious fanatics to keep democracy at bay.
It’s worse than that. Pic below shows states with a smaller population than Los Angeles County. Each state gets two senators. California gets two senators.
Wyoming has about 190,000 people per elector. In California there are about 675,000 people per elector.
