The Constitution Is Whatever the Right Wing Says It Is

[Nevilledog]

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The Atlantic
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"The core conservative belief about the culture war is that there is a Real America that is conservative," @AdamSerwer writes. "This, not historical research, not legal analysis, is the prime means of constitutional interpretation for its current majority."

theatlantic.com
The Constitution Is Whatever the Right Wing Says It Is
The Supreme Court majority’s undead constitutionalism is transforming right-wing media tropes into law.
9:48 AM · Jun 26, 2022

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/roe-overturned-supreme-court-samuel-alito-opinion/661386/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/yBGnI

*snip*

As the three Democratic-appointed justices note in their Dobbs dissent, more constitutional rights now are on the chopping block. “Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure,” the dissenters wrote. “Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.” It seems to be the latter: In his concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas writes that precedents establishing access to contraception, legalizing same-sex marriage, and striking down anti-sodomy laws should be “reconsidered.”
Setting aside the record of insincerity from Alito himself and the other conservative justices, the reason not to trust his disclaimer is that the Supreme Court has become an institution whose primary role is to force a right-wing vision of American society on the rest of the country. The conservative majority’s main vehicle for this imposition is a presentist historical analysis that takes whatever stances define right-wing cultural and political identity at a given moment and asserts them as essential aspects of American law since the founding, and therefore obligatory.

Conservatives have long attacked the left for supporting a “living constitutionalism,” which they say renders the law arbitrary and meaningless. But the current majority’s approach is itself a kind of undead constitutionalism—one in which the dictates of the Constitution retrospectively shift with whatever Fox News happens to be furious about. Legal outcomes preferred by today’s American right conveniently turn out to be what the Founding Fathers wanted all along.

The 6–3 majority has removed any appetite for caution or restraint, and the justices’ lifetime appointments mean they will never have to face an angry electorate that could deprive them of their power. It has also rendered their approach to the law lazy, clumsy, and malicious, and made the right-wing justices’ undead constitutionalism all the more apparent.

Many of the Court’s recent decisions, even before Dobbs, have demonstrated this. In the case over the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for employers, the conservative justices disregarded the explicit text of a federal statute allowing the government to set emergency regulations governing “toxic substances or agents” in the workplace, and employed soft anti-vax arguments that had only become prominent in conservative media since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. As part of its rationale, the majority wrote that “in its half century of existence,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration “has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind,” which is true, because during that period there had not been a global pandemic that killed more than 1 million Americans.

*snip*

[TwilightZone]

1. It pretty much is that simple.

They can essentially do whatever they want. Thomas or Alito will pick and choose what's "important" and the rest of them tag along.

They've also made it clear that the more politically vindictive it is, the better.

[canuckledragger]

2. It's why the behaviour is called facism.

I watch a youtube channel called "Beau of the fifth column".

He made a statement, after a subscriber pointed out his predictions of things to come were usually spot on, that he long ago stop thinking in terms of "what would a conservative do?" and started thinking in terms of "what would a fascist do?" and was rarely wrong predicting their behaviour after that.

The conservative label is just cover. They're fascists and have been for a VERY long time now.

[TwilightZone]

3. Yeah, they haven't been true conservatives in a very long time.

The beginning of the end was Reagan, and people like Gingrich accelerated the process.

Today's GOP has completely lost all rationality in pursuit of power, but the seeds were there decades ago.

PS: I love your username.

[canuckledragger]

4. it's about words and actions.

Their words lie, and their actions tell the truth about what they're after.

And thanks, the username is a joke and a warning to certain types of folks...I'm not exactly a polite Canadian.