An Englishman’s View of the US Supreme Court
I have a very good internet friend whom I have never met. We encountered one another on a social media site ten years ago and were both outsiders. I, and he, were classic liberals. The site was run by “progressives,” to whom classic liberals are anathema. Other than our view of government, we had nothing in common. He helped me grow in appreciation of his many domains of mastery and his religion; I, in turn, taught him little if anything. He enjoys teaching and did not mind. We’ve maintained contact ever since. He recently sent me a message.
BTW: I’ve dropped the impossible green, as you’ve probably noticed. I like the blue better.
Dear Bill,
I saw your comments on my reply to your post re the recent SCOTUS ruling on Roe v. Wade.
I wrote out a long reply. I tried to condense it somewhat. However, it was still too long to put in as a reply. So I decided to delete my replies, and instead to refer it to you, to see what you thought of it.
So I thought to send it to you as an email, so that you could think about it, and if you thought it had merit, you could edit it, and send it back to me, so that I may add it as a reply to your comment.
But I realise that you don't have a lot of time. So take your time before replying back to it.
If you never do get back to me about it, or if you disagree with me, then that is G-d indirectly showing me that it is better off not being posted.
Here is what has been written so far.
Roe v Wade
Re:
https://billheath.substack.com/p/abortion-decision/comments
SM (me): "Politics.
Then came the oral arguments for Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, were heard on December 1st 2021.
No decision was reached for 6 whole months.
Then comes the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack public hearings, a series of hearings about the Jan 6th protests where many people had great doubts about the process of the 2020 election.
According to wiki, they were broadcast on prime time TV, despite the matter was a matter of national security, and thus the very sort of thing you don't want the Russians or the Chinese to be able to watch.
Hearings were held on June 9th 2022, June 13th, June 16th, June 21st, and June 23rd.
The very next day, on June 24th, the SCOTUS decided on Dobbs v. Jackson, and presented a precedent to overthrow Roe v Wade.
For those who can add 2 + 2 together, it's a very clear message:
"You mess with our right to free & honest elections.
You mess with our right to free protests.
We mess with your right to abortion."
My Response
Bill Heath: "Don't think the Supreme Court works that way, because every case has to be decided on its own merits.
I'm surprised the decision wasn't unanimous, and announced by Elena Kagan as a message that assassination threats and attempts against judges will not be tolerated."
Bill Heath: "The Supreme Court convenes in October every year, and hears a lot of cases. For those cases not requiring a timely decision, the clerks discuss the case with the Justice for whom they work, and the Justices then meet to discuss their positions and ask each other questions. This is an effort to get to a consensus. After that, they may meet as often as needed until they formally vote.
The Chief Justice, if he/she voted with the majority, assigns the writing of the majority opinion. All Justices are free to write concurring and non-concurring opinions on every case. Because the Court has a lot of cases at any one time, the assigned Justices' clerks draft an opinion for the Justice's approval, and then the Justice or the clerks try to recruit other Justices to join in that opinion.
Your view of pettiness on the part of the court seems quite strange to me."
Political Shenanigans
Here is my draft reply:
"Perhaps the SCOTUS were not thinking of the recent political shenanigans when making these rulings.
But the written opinion of the SCOTUS' reason for overturning Roe v. Wade, and overturning Miranda rights, and for banning prayer from public schools, was that these liberal precedents had been used too liberally.
In Vega v. Tekoh, a healthcare worker who had sexually assaulted a patient and been arrested for it, had already had the case thrown out because the police officer who had arrested him for violating his Miranda rights. Now he was seeking to punish the police officer for arresting him in the first place.
My Comment: The right against self-incrimination was not overturned. This was a very narrow ruling depending on a couple of legal “terms of art” that most attorneys don’t fully understand.
School Prayer
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-499_gfbh.pdf
In the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the original right of pupils to not be forced to pray against their will, was now being used to fire a high school coach for making a silent prayer that involved no-one else in his free time, and in so doing, was denying Americans their right to exercise their religion.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
People's liberal rights were now being used to oppress people's liberal rights.
Until now, the SCOTUS had let such cases fall under the rug, probably because they felt that they were a minority of cases and the majority of cases of upholding these liberal rights were overall in the people's favour.
However, once postal votes were being extended for 3 months past election day in order to win the 2020 election, when the Jan 6th protest was being cast as a terror attack on Congress, and when the recent hearings were amounting to personal ad-hom attacks, it became clear that people were now "biting the hand that feeds them" so hard, that it looked like America was in danger of becoming a country where only 1 party ever wins elections, and that spirit of liberal generosity was now amounting to an oppressive dictatorship.
It's too coincidental that political rights being used to oppress political rights, and personal rights being used to oppress personal rights, are happening concurrently. People are seeing what happens in Congress, and thinking they can do the same in their personal lives. As a result, what is happening in Congress, is indirectly causing the SCOTUS to clamp down."
My Observation:
I’m not certain what to make of this. Would anyone else care to take a shot at crafting a response?
I've found that the overturning of RvW is a much debated, yet little understood topic.
Ever since the 60s (and arguably before that as well), there has been the idea that Supreme Court Justices should not only interpret law to see if it was constitutional, but that they should also read rights into the Constitution. Most notably for this discussion, the Constitution does not give its citizens a "right to privacy". If the reader does not believe me, please go read the Constitution, find where it explicitly states "right to privacy", and then let me know. The "right to privacy" was read into the Constitution in the 1965 decision of Griswold v. Connecticut. That case had to do with whether states could regulate birth control or not. The Court decided that, no, states cannot do so because it infringes on a citizen's "right to privacy" via the 4th Amendment.
I mention all that because that was what was read into the Constitution with Roe v. Wade. There exists, according to Roe v. Wade, a constitutional right to an abortion via the right to privacy via the 4th Amendment. Yes, I'm oversimplifying the matter for the sake of brevity, but I do believe that I am being factual in the Court's line of reasoning.
What was significant about Dobbs v. Jackson, I think, wasn't even abortion, per se. Ever since abortion had been declared a Constitutional right, it removed the ability for the citizens to pass their own laws about it. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, all the Court said was, "Hey, this should never have been a constitutional right. This is a matter that should be decided by each state because this is a federalist system." If New York and California want to allow abortion on demand up to and after the moment of birth, then they have the right to do that (I would argue not a moral right, but that is beyond the subject matter of this discussion). On the same hand, however, if Alabama and Louisiana want to make all abortions illegal, then that is their right. It is up to the citizens of each state to elect officials who will pass laws that they support. America is not a democracy, it is a representative republic. There is a pretty big difference.
Lastly, I don't think most Europeans understand how abortion is normally conducted here in the States. In fact, the restriction that brought Dobbs v. Jackson to the Supreme Court wasn't a question of a law totally banning abortion, rather it was a law that banned abortions after 15 weeks. Compare this to most European countries that ban abortion after 18-24 weeks. Most people don't know, let alone Europeans, that more black babies are aborted in New York City each year than are born. Most people don't know who Kermit Gosnell is, either.
In sum, I think that there should be a healthy and vigorous debate about abortions because Roe v. Wade acted as a muzzle that kept people from having them. Clarence Thomas's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson noted that the Supreme Court, as an institution, had done a lot of damage to this country by declaring different rights into the Constitution, when it really should have been the people deciding.
***I should note that I am not a lawyer, so take the above with a grain of salt. I feel somewhat confident in writing it because I conducted a lot of independent research on my own regarding this subject material. I only ever got an undergraduate certificate in paralegal studies and then worked as a paralegal for 5 months or so before deciding that it wasn't for me. The law is a legal fiction, anyways***
I have zero expertise on law, or on the Supreme Court, so anything I say won't be useful to consider in crafting an analytical response to your friend.
But I've got a mostly lifelong British friend with whom, before the Plague destroyed life as we knew it, I'd have phone discussions on everything, and to put it in words she wouldn't, those guys over there think we're in general a bunch of uncouth morons who run everything badly and have sadly degraded the inheritance from English Common Law that they'd hoped to have gifted us in perpetuity.
And it was only this Plague Era that made me truly value the basic American temperament--though sadly degraded as it's become in far too many places--of "you can't fucking make me."
But to your friend--standards have sunk so low everywhere, and though I know idiot jurists have always made their way, throughout our history, to lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, I do suspect that the Court we have today has some heck of a collection of sub-par intellects, supported by clerks who are the same, and anything is possible.
FYI--It was a little hard for me to be sure, throughout this post, of every part where your friend was stating his position and you were responding. Haven't had my cup of tea yet so keep that in mind. But perhaps put his words in bolded italics and yours in regular text?