Conservative 5 Testing Robert’s Court Clout
Was still waiting to hear more on the SCOTUS leak of Alito’s draft opinion to Politico. Pulled up Hullabaloo. I was reading Digby post tonight “Oh my, look who’s leaking (again).” It caught my attention, you think???
It isn’t a Liberal . . .
I am still guessing “Ginni” ratted to Politico.
The Washington Post Reporting:
The leaked draft of Alito’s opinion is dated February 10 and is almost surely obsolete now, as justices have had time to offer critiques, dissents and revisions. But as of last week, the five-member majority to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
A person close to the court’s most conservative members said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that left Roe and Casey in place for now. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.
Digby, I don’t think we need anything more to know that conservatives are trying to pressure Roberts. In fact, that second paragraph indicates that a conservative Justice shared what was said in a private conference and then whoever they told leaked it to the press.
So Republicans need to shut the f*ck up about the leak.
The rest of the story . . . . (Yahoo or Washington Post)
WASHINGTON — The explosive leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade not only focused the nation on the magnitude of the change facing abortion rights, it also signaled the rise of a rightward-moving court testing the power of fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts.
As the country awaits a final decision, the intense deliberations inside a court closed to the public and shaken by revelations of its private negotiations appears to be not between the court’s right and left, but among the six conservative justices, including Roberts, in the court’s supermajority.
The mere existence of the draft indicated that five justices had voted at least tentatively to reject Roberts’s incremental approach to restricting abortion rights. Instead, they would reverse Roe after nearly 50 years of guaranteeing a right to abortion that could not be outlawed by the states.
Overturning Roe v Wade
The fact that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. authored the draft is a sign Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s longest-serving member and the only one to write that he would overturn Roe, asserted his seniority to choose who would get the job. In Alito’s more than 16 years on the Supreme Court, he has supported every government restriction on abortion that has come before him.
It is another signal that the 67-year-old Roberts, hailed by scholars just a few years ago as one of the most powerful chief justices in history, is not in control of the process as the court readies its most influential decision in decades.
There is also reason to believe Roberts has not given up. Many who know him well and have watched his maneuvering of the court through other issues are certain he is still preparing his own opinion in hopes he might draw at least one of the court’s newest conservatives to his side. Such an outcome might save 1973′s Roe and the subsequent affirming 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, while severely limiting their protections . . .
Roberts has sometimes sided with the liberals in some of those disputes, particularly when he thought the authority or reputation of the court was at stake.
You can read the rest of it at the link(s) provided above (Yahoo) or at Washington Post.
I believe we have some serious issues with a right -wing SCOTUS leading us down a path which will reverse and negate decisions decades old. This is not just about Roe v. Wade, it concerns me the court is willing to regress in a fashion threatening the very fabric of society decades in the making using an originalist doctrine.
The reasoning of Roe, a 7-2 decision repeatedly reaffirmed by the court, was not weak. For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy. Prior to Roe, the court had protected liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to use contraception, the right to control the upbringing of children and the right of every person to choose “whether to bear or beget a child.”
But this is only one decision. There were many other decisions made since Roe v. Wade. On Sunday, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) suggested “it is not just 50 years of rights endangered. In his leaked opinion, Justice Alito is not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to 1850s. Justice Alito actually cites the fact that abortion was criminalized back when the 14th Amendment was adopted.”
As Dean and constitutional attorney Erwin Chemerinsky posits “For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected the fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy.”
We are in for a rough ride.
“we are in for a rough ride.”
we certainly are, especially if the Right convinces us the issue is the leak and not the assault on “privacy” an related rights strongly implied by the Constitution…if not called out by name because the Framers assumed they were part of basic decency. The Constitution does not explicity give me the right to close the bathroom door when I am on the toilet. Who would have thought a future Justice would decide that the constitution would allow the government to install a camera in the bathroom to make sure I am not up to something the corner sin and damnation preacher would stampeded his flock to burn me at the stake if he told them about it, with pictures.
And even here I am making a mistake. Because I am trying to exaggerate for effect (but it’s by no means beyond possibility) I am still falling into the trap the Left is setting for itself: the only “rights” they are concerned about are those associated with sexuality..which is always a subject people get hysterical about for and against. The fact is that the Rights we need to be araid of losing are more fundamental…in fact, exactly those rights the Right claims to be protecting us from an intrusive government.
I suggest we make this fight about something more fundamental than gay rights, abortion, …etc…all the things “the people” are already convinced are evil, and make it about normal personal privacy and freedom from ANY invasion of our persons or personal behavior that the government… other people… have no compelling interest in. Even there I hesitate. “compelling interest” is easy enough to gin up when the government or some loud faction wants to promote hysteria or tighten the noose.
So, do I think the government should force a caterer to sell wedding cakes for gay marriages? No. But I think calling it a matter of freedom of relition is ridiculous. So why then do I think it’s okay for the government to force restaurants to allow black people to come in and order meals unmolested?
Well, best I can say is that treating black people like subhumans was part of a nationwide systm of oppression that was dangerous to the country as well as harmful to it’s victims… not quite on the order of lynching, but part of the same system of oppression that America was supposed to be the one place in the world where that did not happen.
Trying here, not altogther well, to make the point that “logic” won’t solve the problem…there is always an anti-logic that proves evil is good. But cultivating (you have to be taught) a culture of decency is possible and necessary. We almost created it with the Civil Rights Act..but then WE overreached by threatening people’s most personal values and fears: civil rights for blacks they could accept, busing their own children they could not. Learn to tell the difference.
As for “who leaked?”
I found the idea that it was somone on the Right required too much of a stretch of unlikely and twisted motives to take seriously. I would say the obvious likelihood was someone who wanted to let us see where the Supreme Court was headed in order to give us time to rally against it.
But then I saw people on television back down from the obvious and start to accept the unlikely and twisted theory. My guess is that either they are closer to the unlikely and twisted reasoning that characterizes everything in Washington, or that seeing the Right was making the leak the crime and distracting people’s attention from the real problem (end of the Rights we always assumed we had), the Left felt it had to create some colorable theory that someone on the Right wanted to “lock in” the Alito decision.
I still find that theory too much of a stretch. But given the convoluted reasoning characteristic of the Court and politicians in general… well, even if it’s not true, it’s probably what we are going to end up fighting about.
Unless we are smart enough to bring the focus back to what Alito is proposing and why it is as dangerous as letting the States control the election process.
Meanwhile we have a debt of gratitude to whoever leaked the opinion. We need to save him from being Assanged. Of course we need to save Assange from being Assanged, and I haven’t seen much concern from anyone about that. We seem perfectly fine with human rights abuse as long as it doesn’t threaten our sex habits.
Coberly,
Agreed, but not worried much about leak-gate, which is the focus only among the squirrels. Protests are about the court’s decision to drop a load on women’s rights, not the court taking a leak. Doris Kearns Goodwin was on Morning Joe this AM making the issue clear – time to get out the vote. She also reminded us that civil rights, women’s suffrage and rights, worker safety, clean air and water, and so on came about because of activist movements. Forget about appealing to the charitable nature of elites. People get the polity that they are willing to accept.
couple of unfortunate typos in my comments above. i think you can figure out what i meant.
but i am really typing this because i forgot to check the “notify me” box.
which is not surprising since i can’t find it.
here’s another clue for you all:
the leaker was someone who wanted us to see the opinion before the Court cleaned it up.
So we know what the enemy looks like without makeup.