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How Will the Court Survive?
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?
MR. STEWART: I —
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: I — I — I don’t see how it is possible. It’s what Casey talked about when it talked about watershed decisions. Some of them, Brown versus Board of Education it mentioned, and this one have such an entrenched set of expectations in our society that this is what the Court decided, this is what we will follow, that the — that we won’t be able to survive if people believe that everything, including New York versus Sullivan — I could name any other set of rights, including the Second Amendment, by the way. There are many political people who believe the Court erred in seeing this as a personal right as — as opposed to a militia right. If people actually believe that it’s all political, how will we survive? How will the Court survive?
-Excerpt from Oral Argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, December 1, 2021
I’ve just started reading through the transcript of this morning’s oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, so I cannot comment on the entire discussion. However, these questions posed by Justin Sotomayor struck me as especially callous. Justice Sotomayor emphasized the word “survive” in reference to her own authority, but it just made me think of the survival of unborn babies at issue in this case. Recognizing the political implications of this case, I understand the reason she is asking such questions. I’m thinking that she might have used a less loaded word, but perhaps the repeated reliance on “survive” is a bit of a Freudian slip?
Published in General
He’s the giant of our times on the Court.
Better than Gore would have given us.
But you’re not wrong.
She said “survive” because she knows full well that if they overturn Roe and Casey then the dems will flip out like we’ve never seen before and they will not let one ballot box go unstuffed or anything to happen in Congress until they have stacked the courts.
Now that I’ve had the chance to read a little further, there’s more “wisdom” from Sotomayor to share:
There’s a lot wrong with her reasoning here, but I can’t help but focus on the word “poorer.” I think a woman’s life is only “poorer” from giving birth (and raising the child herself) if you only think in material terms, and maybe not even then. To bring another person into the world when the alternative is to forcibly terminate that person’s life, is not to diminish the life of the mother.
I’m pretty sure I am financially disadvantaged by my children (and now they’re old enough to want more expensive Christmas presents), but they enrich my life and the lives of family, friends, teachers, coaches, etc. Hopefully, they’ll create families of their own in time. Justice Sotomayor’s line of questioning reminds me that she doesn’t have any children of her own.
Fixed it for you.
Latinx, at least for now.
Robert’s will try to make the ruling narrow to the extent possible but this does not sound like caving to me.
No doubt the rulings of that court would be labeled “white supremacy.”
Exactly this, she seems blissfully unaware that that particular horse long ago bolted the barn.
And she was riding the horse.
Or, she is fully aware and engaging in the left’s standard operating procedure of lying in conformity with the Party program.
No. She was talking to Gorsuch, who colluded with Roberts and the left in violating and gutting the true 1st Amendment, as written and ratified, just as their predecessors willfully violated and gutted the 14th Amendment shortly after it was ratified. Gorsuch did so in his outrageous, lawless, political opinion redefining “sex” from what it meant in federal law, in order to expose true Christian churches and people to lawfare in the false name of sexual identity. In doing so, he deliberately stood the First Freedom acknowledged in our First Amendment on its head.
Gorsuch left the Catholic Church for the Episcopalian Church when he married into the Anglican/Episcopalian church. Both are mostly spiritually dead and fully embrace and advocate open sexual defiance of the small “o” orthodox, small “c” catholic Christian faith. Gorsuch knowingly put Christians who do not conform to the regime and regime approved/affirming religion back in the position of the Puritans, Catholics, and other dissenters from the state religion of the British Empire. He wants modern dissenters from the state approved dogma harried relentlessly into conformity with his and the regime’s beliefs.
Gorsuch will likely rule to keep his new church’s true sacrament of abortion on demand.
She also denied fetuses experience pain. She is full throated pro-abortion. She is the absolute worst on the bench.
LOL, though I see your point, that’s a bit much.
Remind me again: which side is the party of science?
That’s a fair point too. I find Sotomayor to be shameful and the worst justice of my admittedly short lifetime. That said, she’s not the most frustrating. Sotomayor is a reliable insane vote- I know that she’s awful and she never exceeds my low, low expectations for her. But Roberts is the most frustrating to me because he blows with the wind and comes up with idiotic decisions to “protect” the judicial branch as he sees it.
3 cases stand out to me as completely indefensible.
1st, he twisted himself into a pretzel to turn Obamacare into a tax, when the Obama admin specifically argued it wasn’t a tax, in order to save it and not have to overturn an obviously unconstitutional law. I’m not even a legal, constitutional, or historical scholar and I can see that on its face Obamacare is unconstitutional. Shame on Roberts.
2nd, Roberts sided against Trump in the DACA case when he said that Trump admin couldn’t end DACA in the way it did. As Thomas pointed out, even though the original Obama decision was unlawful, Trump couldn’t do away with it in the same manner unless he provided a sufficient reason to do so (more or less). This binds future admins to an unlawful law unless it meets the courts’ standard of ending the program. He’s playing politics.
3rd, he dissented when the court struck down the Texas abortion law, but then a few years later switched his vote and voted to strike down the Louisiana abortion law (which was essentially the exact same) because of stare decisis (how is 3 or 4 years enough time for law to be settled?). He was for it, then he was against it.
He’s a terrible Chief Justice. He’s more concerned with the “legitimacy” of the court to the view of the public (as he incorrectly sees it), even as it overruns the constitution and the entire conservative half of the country loses respect for the institution because it won’t follow the law.
Sometimes less posting is good posting.
Following Red Sonia’s impeccable logic, it is truly tragic that the Supreme Court avoided all the obvious good that honoring the iron rule of precedent would have accrued to its institutional reputation and the republic when it overruled previous Supreme Court decisions for the last two centuries.
It might be that the Supreme Court was never intended to be what it has become: an unaccountable blight on the rule of law by a free people and their representatives.
Will they go berserk? They’ll still have abortion in states where they dominate and probably most Democrats don’t know that. Think of the money they can raise to help folks come to New York and California.
Only the ones proud that they are a wise latina and brag about it . . .
I remember in one Law Talk pocast, someone (Troy or John) made a comment “What would it be like to have 9 Supreme Court Justice Richard Epsteins?”
Epstein said something like, “Every decision would be 5-4.”
Or something like that . . .
It just occurred to me. Sotomayor was an Obama pick. I don’t know if Gore would have picked worse but he could have picked better than Obama.
I generally agree with this because I disagree with the decisions. Roe and Obergerfell are worth mentioning because the Court intervened on issues that were actively being addressed by the states and by the political system and these issues were not issues of interpreting something that was in the Constitution.
At the same time, I tend towards thinking the argument Justice Sotomayor is making is wrong headed on empirical grounds. While the Court tends towards lagging public opinion on the decisions that it makes, it has made plenty of unpopular decisions before. Brown v. Board would be one of them. The Court essentially lets states ignore some of the more extensive margins of Heller and McDonald. Obergerfell upset a lot of people. Generally the Court has always muddled along. People outside very highly motivated talking heads in the news don’t care that much. That’s why her question is wrong headed. At the end of the day it will be but one of many rulings the Court makes and state legislatures/ executives will respond accordingly.
If the Democrats are unable to steal the next election we can fix matters if we want to. They have no intention of allowing honest elections, that should be obvious but may not succeed. We have to find a way to win, and if that proves impossible we’ll have to pull out but the same folks who would steal the election will try to fix it so states can’t pull out, so we have to plan for both. We’re not coming to grips with who these people are. The treatment of the disease shows us who they are.
Comments like that by Justice Sotomayor reinforce the lack of respect I have for her intellect and legal reasoning (I am a lawyer). And, that particular comment betrays her supposed concern for institutional reputation. The quoted comment is exactly the type of policy tradeoff that a legislative body debates. It is not how we define what is or is not a fundamental right. She is the one creating the impression that the court’s decision is primarily political.
Shouldn’t that be ‘wise latinxs’?
I agree but I think Alito is a sleeper. He, of course, is not the lightening rod that Thomas is but he has been solidly Constitutional and conservative in his decisions and writings.
Yes but this decision will only be announced on the last day in late June, and congress won’t get it done over the summer, so maybe theyll run out of time to try it. Would also need to get rid of fillibuster in the Senate, so they may not be able to pack it.
They will stuff every ballot box in the country to win next time. They’re in it to win and once they win the game will be over.
That’s massively unfair to Gorsuch. How do you know what his faith is like, and why should it matter?
I wasn’t the biggest fan of his Bostock decision, but this is an absurd attack. In the last abortion case, June Medical, Gorsuch joined Alito’s dissent and wrote his own attacking the majority for ignoring court precedent to reach a preferred outcome. He also made clear the he is not afraid to overrule bad precedent. Gorsuch isn’t a squish.
I think the MS law will be upheld–which by itself is a huge win! The only question is whether Roe/Casey are struck down in the process. The two wild cards on that score are the Chief and ACB. They’re institutionalists and are more in favor of incremental change. We’ll know soon enough.