The Supreme Court

[Peeps]

the fact that so many republican elected officials have had their mistresses get abortions and claim they are pro life yet vote against prenatal care, , family planning, subsidized daycare, free lunches for kids shows you how truly they are not advocates for children but more want to control what a woman can do

the other thing that pisses me off is three Supreme court justices out and out lied during their confirmation hearings about their feelings on roe v wade and yet all republicans seemed concerned about is OH MY GOSH SOMEONE LEAKED THE OPINION THIS IS THE HIGHEST CRIME IN THE COUNTRY

[4/5]

when are they going to overturn loving v virginia? brown v board of ed?

seriously, is there a site to gamble on this stuff? if we're gonna go backwards i might as well profit off of this bullshit.

Gilead here we come

Do you actually believe that conservatives want to revisit these decisions?

brown? no. loving? yes

Conservative Justices promote a colorblind interpretation of the Constitution and both of these decisions are squarely within that framework and anti-miscegenation laws are inarguably a distinction based on race. It would also be just a little awkward for a court with Clarence Thomas.

US v Windsor, Obergefell v Hodges, and Lawrence v Texas are all cases I'd argue are in much bigger danger than either of those two.

[4/5]

By the way, I love how b_i's article paints as victims the poor states who are not allowed to control women the way they want to control women. Thank God the Supreme Court is here to protect those in power from the demagogy of the unintentionally pregnant. State governments aren't the victims here. They are the majority bullying the victims in their states.

I don't read it as assigning victimhood. Put aside his framing of Roe for a moment, but his description of the Court, the case, and the annoying rhetoric any time the Court makes a major ruling is on point. The Supreme Court is absolutely an anti-majoritarian institution and that's a good thing! In Federalist 78 Hamilton describes it as "the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments." One of their main purposes is to prevent legislative overreach (read: strike down policies that have majority support). As a related aside, the Bill of Rights is also anti-majoritarian. "Congress shall make no law..." taking away rights even if majorities dislike a particular group's speech or religion, etc. (Just looked back at the article and the author already said this. Oh well, I'm keeping those sentences.)

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities. And if you want to frame Dobbs positively it is also true that it is majoritarian by handing the issue back to legislatures.

Personally, I'm typically a big fan of the Supreme Court protecting civil liberties and civil rights by removing them from the political process so I don't see this as something to criticize but something to be glad for. At the same time, Court rulings can never be as strongly entrenched as legislation and are inherently weaker and part of that weakness stems from the fact that they are anti-majoritarian.

[B]

when are they going to overturn loving v virginia? brown v board of ed?

seriously, is there a site to gamble on this stuff? if we're gonna go backwards i might as well profit off of this bullshit.

Gilead here we come

Do you actually believe that conservatives want to revisit these decisions?

brown? no. loving? yes

There is definitely a white kid forced to attend a school in "the wrong part of town" that will definitely make their way to the Supreme Court as a Brown challenge.

[B]

By the way, I love how b_i's article paints as victims the poor states who are not allowed to control women the way they want to control women. Thank God the Supreme Court is here to protect those in power from the demagogy of the unintentionally pregnant. State governments aren't the victims here. They are the majority bullying the victims in their states.

I don't read it as assigning victimhood. Put aside his framing of Roe for a moment, but his description of the Court, the case, and the annoying rhetoric any time the Court makes a major ruling is on point. The Supreme Court is absolutely an anti-majoritarian institution and that's a good thing! In Federalist 78 Hamilton describes it as "the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments." One of their main purposes is to prevent legislative overreach (read: strike down policies that have majority support). As a related aside, the Bill of Rights is also anti-majoritarian. "Congress shall make no law..." taking away rights even if majorities dislike a particular group's speech or religion, etc. (Just looked back at the article and the author already said this. Oh well, I'm keeping those sentences.)

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities. And if you want to frame Dobbs positively it is also true that it is majoritarian by handing the issue back to legislatures.

Personally, I'm typically a big fan of the Supreme Court protecting civil liberties and civil rights by removing them from the political process so I don't see this as something to criticize but something to be glad for. At the same time, Court rulings can never be as strongly entrenched as legislation and are inherently weaker and part of that weakness stems from the fact that they are anti-majoritarian.

Did I misunderstand the article? I thought it was defending this decision as anti-majoritarian.

[Mickey]

Huge gap between "people on Twitter are annoying and don't truly understand this" (axiomatically true) and "it's actually more democratic to allow Mississippi to ban abortion" (lmao). Glenn Greenwald is a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary who writes for the simplest of rubes, so it's not surprising to see him make that leap, but it is disappointing to see this kind of pablum get lapped up.

[McParadigm]

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities.

This maybe gets at the heart of if for me, which is that I am far more comfortable with anti-majoritarian institutions protecting rights from majority rule than I am watching an anti-majoritarian institution revoke rights the public broadly supports.

Brown and Obergefell were anti-majoritarian rulings that expanded access to rights in spite of public opposition. Good. Correct. Awesome.

Roe was an anti-majoritarian rule that RETURNED an access that had been revoked by the voting public majority.

It's worth remembering that until the 1820s, the status quo was that abortion was dangerous but not illegal. And the freedom to have an abortion was exercised. People like Madame Restell and Sir James Clarke ran multi-state businesses around it. This is a choice that Americans could make for themselves, that was then taken away from them. It is the story of a personal decision that was rescinded from the individual because a local majority decided they wanted it to be.

At the end of the day, abortion restrictions are exactly the kind of thing that people like Glen panic over all day long: the majority took something away from the people using the government as their weapon. And that's why he invokes the imagery of suppression against his readers, even though he's arguing in support of a ruling that makes it possible to suppress...to keep as far away from that framing as possible.

Thus, in the U.S., it does not matter if 80% or 90% of Americans support a law to restrict free speech, or ban the free exercise of a particular religion, or imprison someone without due process, or subject a particularly despised criminal to cruel and unusual punishment

A woman getting an abortion isn't a restriction of any kind on you. Creating a law to revoke that access is the restriction. State laws criminalizing it are the ban. Women and doctors will be the ones going to prison for abortions.

Louisiana's fetal personhood bill is now moved out of committee, on a vote of 7-2. It makes abortions a crime of homicide from the moment a pregnancy can be proven, and allows prosecutors to charge patients with murder. That's what the absence of a national legal protection does here. Glen's defense of this gets to the heart of an entire philosophy, which says that a central government protecting your rights against local majority rule is less ideal than your state government revoking a right because a majority of local citizens do not want you to have it.

[Green Habit]

when are they going to overturn loving v virginia? brown v board of ed?

seriously, is there a site to gamble on this stuff? if we're gonna go backwards i might as well profit off of this bullshit.

Gilead here we come

Do you actually believe that conservatives want to revisit these decisions?

I don't know if prominent conservatives with major power will be the ones to trigger it, but I could see something like the next Kim Davis in Bumblefuck, Red State, USA refuse to process a marriage license, the state AG weasels out with some tactic like saying "that law is still on the books, and we'll the courts decide", and off to SCOTUS they go.

[Mickey]

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities.

This maybe gets at the heart of if for me, which is that I am far more comfortable with anti-majoritarian institutions protecting rights from majority rule than I am watching an anti-majoritarian institution revoke rights the public broadly supports.

Brown and Obergefell were anti-majoritarian rulings that expanded access to rights in spite of public opposition. Good. Correct. Awesome.

Roe was an anti-majoritarian rule that RETURNED an access that had been revoked by the voting public majority.

It's worth remembering that until the 1820s, the status quo was that abortion was dangerous but not illegal. And the freedom to have an abortion was exercised. People like Madame Restell and Sir James Clarke ran multi-state businesses around it. This is a choice that Americans could make for themselves, that was then taken away from them. It is the story of a personal decision that was rescinded from the individual because a local majority decided they wanted it to be.

At the end of the day, abortion restrictions are exactly the kind of thing that people like Glen panic over all day long: the majority took something away from the people using the government as their weapon. And that's why he invokes the imagery of suppression against his readers, even though he's arguing in support of a ruling that makes it possible to suppress...to keep as far away from that framing as possible.

Thus, in the U.S., it does not matter if 80% or 90% of Americans support a law to restrict free speech, or ban the free exercise of a particular religion, or imprison someone without due process, or subject a particularly despised criminal to cruel and unusual punishment

A woman getting an abortion isn't a restriction of any kind on you. Creating a law to revoke that access is the restriction. State laws criminalizing it are the ban. Women and doctors will be the ones going to prison for abortions.

Louisiana's fetal personhood bill is now moved out of committee, on a vote of 7-2. It makes abortions a crime of homicide from the moment a pregnancy can be proven, and allows prosecutors to charge patients with murder. That's what the absence of a national legal protection does here. Glen's defense of this gets to the heart of an entire philosophy, which says that a central government protecting your rights against local majority rule is less ideal than your state government revoking a right because a majority of local citizens do not want you to have it.

Excellent post. Also worth noting that Glen's argument is predicated on state legislatures (particularly in the South!) being de-facto democratic institutions, which is a belief that is tenable only in theory.

[Green Habit]

The Supreme Court is absolutely an anti-majoritarian institution and that's a good thing! In Federalist 78 Hamilton describes it as "the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments." One of their main purposes is to prevent legislative overreach (read: strike down policies that have majority support). As a related aside, the Bill of Rights is also anti-majoritarian. "Congress shall make no law..." taking away rights even if majorities dislike a particular group's speech or religion, etc. (Just looked back at the article and the author already said this. Oh well, I'm keeping those sentences.)

One of my hot takes that I'm welding much stronger to is that everyone is antidemocratic to some extent--there's just a difference as to what things each person thinks should be removed from a simple majoritarian democracy.

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities. And if you want to frame Dobbs positively it is also true that it is majoritarian by handing the issue back to legislatures.

These cases were certainly antimajoritarian within the regions you describe, but all eventually had majority support nationally. This is particularly stark for Brown: for decades, the rest of the nation didn't like Jim Crow but ultimately felt that it was the South's business only. That position got increasingly untenable after World War II, and eventually the national majority against Jim Crow prevailed, including but not limited to at SCOTUS.

I'm guessing this will end up true with abortion as well: there may be states where there's a legitimate majority within that want to go so far as to completely ban it, but the national majority is likely going to be nowhere near that position.

[Green Habit]

Also worth noting that Glen's argument is predicated on state legislatures (particularly in the South!) being de-facto democratic institutions, which is a belief that is tenable only in theory.

This is another good point that's not just limited to the South--gerrymandering has the potential to warp things toward minority power, even if the majority vote otherwise.

[4/5]

Huge gap between "people on Twitter are annoying and don't truly understand this" (axiomatically true) and "it's actually more democratic to allow Mississippi to ban abortion" (lmao). Glenn Greenwald is a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary who writes for the simplest of rubes, so it's not surprising to see him make that leap, but it is disappointing to see this kind of pablum get lapped up.

It is more democratic if you mean majority rule and local control. But I don't worship democracy so it doesn't follow for me that something being more democratic is automatically good. In this case, more democracy/majority rule is bad, but I think it's correct to say it's more democratic to give voters/policymakers control over the policy.

[4/5]

This maybe gets at the heart of if for me, which is that I am far more comfortable with anti-majoritarian institutions protecting rights from majority rule than I am watching an anti-majoritarian institution revoke rights the public broadly supports.

Brown and Obergefell were anti-majoritarian rulings that expanded access to rights in spite of public opposition. Good. Correct. Awesome.

Roe was an anti-majoritarian rule that RETURNED an access that had been revoked by the voting public majority.

Agreed on all accounts. I like the Court constitutionalizing rights and removing them from majority control. It follows that I don't like unconstitutionalizing rights and making them subject to majoritarian politics again. I was just trying to say that it can be true that something is undemocratic and that's also fine. I would probably respond to the author with something like what you just said. To be clear, I prefer antimajoritarian Roe to the ostensibly more democratic Dobbs.

[4/5]

One of my hot takes that I'm welding much stronger to is that everyone is antidemocratic to some extent--there's just a difference as to what things each person thinks should be removed from a simple majoritarian democracy.

As a general rule, I'm good with things that expand/protect rights of individuals or groups being removed from majoritarian control.

These cases were certainly antimajoritarian within the regions you describe, but all eventually had majority support nationally. This is particularly stark for Brown: for decades, the rest of the nation didn't like Jim Crow but ultimately felt that it was the South's business only. That position got increasingly untenable after World War II, and eventually the national majority against Jim Crow prevailed, including but not limited to at SCOTUS.

I'm guessing this will end up true with abortion as well: there may be states where there's a legitimate majority within that want to go so far as to completely ban it, but the national majority is likely going to be nowhere near that position.

This is an interesting argument, making it more of a what's the right level of government to decide these questions. Again, expanding rights and protecting minorities is generally one of the things that I think has been better handled at the federal level and I prefer to see that (even though I might be uncomfortable with the Constitutional mechanisms used to do so) than to see something that is "more democratic" at the state level but ultimately harmful to people without political power.

[Bi_3]

Brown v. Board was anti-majoritarian. Those states and local governments clearly wanted segregated public schools and the Court came in and imposed its will over the will of the majority. Obergefell v Hodges was anti-majoritarian, etc. The author references Federalist 10 which wrestles with the question of how to allow majority rule while maintaining minority rights, which in practice means how do you empower the majority to make most policies but prevent it from making policies that tyrannize minorities? Chief among the answers are a Constitution of limited powers and a Court to check legislative (majoritarian) overreaches.

Roe was also anti-majoritarian. It removed the ability to ban abortion from democratically elected majorities.

This maybe gets at the heart of if for me, which is that I am far more comfortable with anti-majoritarian institutions protecting rights from majority rule than I am watching an anti-majoritarian institution revoke rights the public broadly supports.

Brown and Obergefell were anti-majoritarian rulings that expanded access to rights in spite of public opposition. Good. Correct. Awesome.

Roe was an anti-majoritarian rule that RETURNED an access that had been revoked by the voting public majority.

<snip>

I think this falls into the tactical advantage that the pro-life groups have always had, the wiggle-room distinction between being anti-Roe and anti-abortion. Roe is sort of like the Court recognized what the morally correct answer was (the ends) and came up with a way to get there (the means). The issue is that those means have always been questionable as to whether or not the Court acted within it's boundaries in deciding Roe and I think this is illustrated by their increasing allowance of restrictions over the last few decades (see here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitutio ... n-abortion) on elements of Roe like trimesters, viability, the economic interests of the state, etc. Ultimately, the Court is not there to determine when the fetus' rights begin. It's there to evaluate the Constitutionality of any legislation that claims to make that determination. So if we look at Alito's draft on the "Roe was wrongly decided" point and not the "abortion is wrong" point, then it becomes difficult to argue that the Court did the wrong thing in saying 'go pass a law' even if we, I am assuming everyone here is on the same page, feel abortion is a right and must be private, safe, regulated, and bounded. I understand and acknowledge that in effect there is no practical difference for 10's of millions, but the system is behaving as it is suppose to and returning this question to the voters to make that moral determination.

[B]

Man, you guys have managed to make the loss of Civil Rights the most boring, pedantic slog of the 21st Century. I think the great victory of originalism was to turn people into glassy-eyed, drooling zombies so that Conservatives can do whatever the fuck they want to the country.

How about we talk about the fact that Alito accused the pro-choice movement of wanting to suppress the Black population? IN A MOTHER FUCKING SUPREME COURT OPINION!

“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population. It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.”

[simple schoolboy]

How about we talk about the fact that Alito accused the pro-choice movement of wanting to suppress the Black population? IN A MOTHER FUCKING SUPREME COURT OPINION!

They certainly did a century ago. Not so much explicitly these days.

[BurtReynolds]

How about we talk about the fact that Alito accused the pro-choice movement of wanting to suppress the Black population? IN A MOTHER FUCKING SUPREME COURT OPINION!

They certainly did a century ago. Not so much explicitly these days.

Margaret Sanger right now:

[simple schoolboy]

How about we talk about the fact that Alito accused the pro-choice movement of wanting to suppress the Black population? IN A MOTHER FUCKING SUPREME COURT OPINION!

They certainly did a century ago. Not so much explicitly these days.

Margaret Sanger right now:

Her solution wasn't necessarily shared across the political spectrum, but thinking there was a 'problem' was a fairly common view.

[B]

How about we talk about the fact that Alito accused the pro-choice movement of wanting to suppress the Black population? IN A MOTHER FUCKING SUPREME COURT OPINION!

They certainly did a century ago. Not so much explicitly these days.

The only thing less relavant than 100 year old opinions about women's rights is 235 year old opinions about women's rights.