stare decisis — Latin for “to stand by things decided.”
I am no attorney. However my experience has caused me to learn the law an how it applies to us. I have learned attorneys are not necessarily honest with plebeians, You know us butchers, bakers, candle stick makers or collectively anyone at all. As a just-out-of-boot-camo Marine private, I can remember one Corporal saying this to us at Pendleton. Different story for another time.
Yesterday (September 25, 2021, Robert Reich had an interesting article up on his Substack . . an interesting read.
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“When I Was at Law School with Clarence Thomas“
“Earlier this week, Clarence Thomas told a crowd of more than 800 students and faculty at Notre Dame the Court shouldn’t be viewed in partisan terms, and justices don’t base their rulings on ‘personal preferences.’ But if not personal preferences, where exactly do they discover the law? Thomas never said. When asked whether the attorneys presenting oral arguments ever compel him to change his mind, Thomas said, ‘almost never.’
Last week, the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, told a crowd in Kentucky that Supreme Court justices are not a ‘bunch of partisan hacks.’
Methinks they doth protest too much.
If there’s any doubt about the partisan hackery of the Supreme Court’s six Republican appointees, it will be on full display in the Court’s next session when they overturn Roe in the case they’ve already teed up to do the dirty deed:
Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, about Mississippi’s law that bans almost all abortions after the 15th week. It’s scheduled to be argued December 1.
Flashback: I was in law school in 1973 when the Supreme Court decided Roe, protecting a pregnant person’s right to privacy under the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Also in my class at the time was Clarence Thomas, along with Hillary Rodham (later Hillary Clinton) and Bill Clinton.
The professors used what you probably know as the ‘Socratic method’ – asking hard questions about the cases they were discussing and waiting for students to raise their hands in response, and then criticizing the responses. It was a hair-raising but effective way to learn the law.
One of the principles guiding those discussions is called stare decisis — Latin for ‘to stand by things decided.’
It’s the doctrine of judicial precedent. If a court has already ruled on an issue (say, on reproductive rights), future courts should decide similar cases the same way. Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise, their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say? — partisan.
In those classroom discussions almost fifty years ago, Hillary’s hand was always first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers – whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.
My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.
Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.
Bill was never in class.
Only one of us now sits on the Supreme Court. By all accounts, he and four of his colleagues — all appointed by Republican presidents, three by a president who instigated a coup against the United States — are getting ready to violate stare decisis, judicial precedent.
I don’t expect them to give a clear and convincing argument for why.
Do you?”
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I believe Robert Reich may be right. Once again religion will prevail under the guise of legal precedent in derailing the right of women whether Christian or not to decide without the interference of religious fervor or others. I am confident some of my attorney friends will have comments to make also.
Reich has appeared to have decided already as has the court.
That which is conceived in private may be aborted in private. IOW, in case of immaculate conception then get a coat hanger.
No, I am not against a woman’s right to have an abortion, but I am against legislating from the judicial bench; e.g., Citizen’s United. Make our legislators earn their insider trading capital gains.
I think it is interesting that vaccine mandates are often advocated on the grounds that the corporal integrity of an individual with regards to these medications is not absolute when there is potential risk to others in exercising free choice in the matter.But abortion is the intentional destruction of another life. That’s its purpose. But in the case of abortion, there are many who believe that it is illegitimate for states to weigh the competing interests in creating law and the overlap with those generally favoring state authority to bully people over vaccines is likely not random chance. And the issue is whether or not the pre-born have an interest in existing that a state can recognize. Not sure what the point is about Christianity being made, but I am not aware of any attempt to restrict the abortion of notionally Christian pre-born and other classes of pre-born. Like it or not, Roe and Casey settled very little for the nation.“But abortion is the intentional destruction of another life.” Whose? (Is this that unconceived baby thing they used trying to convince teen aged boys not to masturbate?)
Refusing to get vaccinated is about one’s right to infect others. Since COVID is fatal all too often, that’s the intentional destruction of another life?
Kalesberg:
Forget the vaccine thing. Eric likes to wander.
Is it an offense against natural law to refrain from sexually assaulting an attractive woman?
Well, I was going to do my Socratic best to try some hair raising, but maybe not here.
[consider, if you can, that “if” killing an unborn person was the same as killing a child. would that change your view about the “rights” of the unwilling mother?
was Roe v Wade an example of stare decisis?
was Erik wandering or trying to make a point you disagree with? “my body myself” except when there is a remote possibility your right to body integrity could endanger my life?
or when does “remote possibility” become “imminent threat” as in “i feared for my life”?
or does my trying to get you to consider these and other questions constitute “shit stirring”?
or proof that I am trying to base “the law” on my own personal morality which, as we know, is driven by the demons who call themselves christians and therefore cannot be allowed to have a say in government?
for what it is worth, and here that is not much, i personally believe the law should stay out of “abortion” altogether. “reason” is not up to the human complexities. previous experience teaches me that no one will get this far, having turned red paragraphs ago when “realizing” that I appeared to be disagreeing with you.]
oh, and not entirely irrelevant, considering the thread thus far: i completely support your right to masturbate in private. in public? not so much. not as a matter of “religion” so much as a matter of taste, of what we want to have to be exposed to in public, which as far as i know is the ultimate origin of both religion and the law.
oh, to try to be more clear:
if you should choose to masturbate in public, i do NOT support the “right” of cops to arrest you, or beat you up if you resist arrest, or shoot you if you try to run away from them.
not sure i can justify this by any religious idea, or legal consistency. perhaps it’s just that i can imagine that if i lost my fear of public disapproval i would not want to be arrested or beat up or shot. but on the other hand, i don’t think i would like to live in a country where public masturbation was accepted as normal. what to do? what to do?
Yes but life begins in the leering eye of the male.
JackD
i can’t tell if that was addressed to me, or why.
as for the leering eye of the male, i suspect you don’t know much about women, As Harry Belefonte sang, “Woman, she smarter, in every way.” Other scholars have come to the same conclusion. As for the natural law regarding assaulting attractive women… Yes, that used to be enforced by the biggest ape in the tribe. Or by the woman’s father, brothers, or husband. In some cases the woman took over arranging these things themselves. Think of it a population control before the pill. Eugenics before Big Government.