Cacophony of dunces: When the Supreme Court trashed the Constitution

[marmar]

Cacophony of dunces: When the Supreme Court trashed the Constitution
Sam Alito and John Roberts appeal to "history and tradition" — while they dance around the burning Constitution

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED JULY 9, 2022 8:00AM


(Salon) Watching Justice Samuel Alito go spelunking in his Dobbs opinion through centuries of so-called history and tradition in search of legal justifications to overturn the right to abortion decided almost 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade was like watching a boy play in a pile of dirt. Where do I dig next, he seemed to be muttering to himself as he shoveled manure from a slave-era law in Virginia onto an 18th-century pile of garbage he quoted from some doofus who believed women were inferior beings. Clarence Thomas was right there behind him in his decision that New York can't prevent people from carrying concealed weapons, plowing through statutes from jolly old England and the American frontier to show that Dodge City didn't really mean it when they told cowboys they had to check their six-guns with the sheriff if they came into town.

And then along came Chief Justice Roberts as clean-up man, swinging the club of something known as the "major questions doctrine" to deny the Environmental Protection Agency its statutory authority to — duh — protect the environment unless Congress spells out exactly how they should do it. According to Roberts, it is Congress, not the EPA, that has to write a rule telling corporations they can't empty industrial waste directly into creeks, rivers or the ocean because it's a "major question" if it costs corporations a lot of money, so let's make it as hard as possible for the government to take a chunk out of our golf buddies' bottom lines.

Throughout the entire year of decisions by a court that for the first time included all three of the Supreme Court's newest and most conservative members, the Republican majority decided to jettison the doctrine of stare decisis, which means to stand by things decided, and employ their own doctrine on how precedents should be treated: Stare quisquilias acervum or "stand by the trash heap," where they proceeded to throw the court's previous decisions and entire articles of the Constitution.

All of this in service to their favorite doctrine of all — rights granted by the Constitution must be "deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition" or they aren't really rights at all. Legal scholars have been predicting that the court will use its new jewel of a doctrine to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, not to mention other recent decisions recognizing rights under the privacy provision of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment … because we have no "history and tradition" of same-sex marriage or gay sex or rubbers or the pill, or anything else they simply don't like. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/09/cacophony-of-dunces-when-the-trashed-the-constitution/

[lark]

1. American Taliban turning American law into Sharia law.

Both have the aim of subjugating women and are full of hate and have no real christianity in either of them.

[2naSalit]

2. +1

[ancianita]

3. One example is how theocratic amicus curiae influenced SCOTUS' theological bias under Dobbs,

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/11/we-read-all-the-amicus-briefs-in-dobbs-so-you-dont-have-to/

That dogma-driven "reasoning" by the "friends of the court" flotilla came from

the National Right to Life Committee and
the Louisiana Right to Life Federation
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious organizations
Center for Religious Expression
Three physicians and the Catholic Association Foundation
Trinity Legal Center
Catholic Medical Association,
National Association of Catholic Nurses-USA,
Idaho Chooses Life and
Texas Alliance for Life
Christian Legal Society and Robertson Center for Constitutional Law,
Concerned Women for America, and
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association