With all due respect to all who think that our government has failed us, I beg to disagree. SCOTUS failed us, now we need to give time to our government, the present one, to respond accordingly. But decisions like this one are not overturn soon but what really is coming soon are elections. Our part is to make people move and vote. More than 75% of the population do not agree with this SCOTUS decision and, you know? We need 75% of the States to agree on a referendum to vote on an amendment to the Constitution. I think we need to work for that, so this SCOTUS decision can be solved once an for all.
Your point is valid however the GOP is working HARD to undermine the next elections. And the Dems are out of touch and out of tune with the majority of Americans -- 30 of them sang God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol Friday. So tone deaf (figurative and literal). The Dems never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Unless and until they start fighting fire with fire, nothing will change. Congress has great power to reign in a rogue SCOTUS. Have you heard anyone in Congress mention it? Because all I hear are crickets. That being said, YES VOTE - WHILE WE STILL CAN!
@Laura F.
The Sedition Act of 1918 deals with espionage. This is what it says:
"It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt."
The Sedition Act had to do with things that happened during World War I (1914-1917). The U.S. entered it in 1917, and the Sedition Act was enacted in 1918. AND this Act was repealed on December 13, 1920... NO longer in use. And by the way, it was passed by Congress, meaning, a law that has made by Congress is NOT greater than the Constitution. It means, it is not constitutional. If, the Sedition Act was in use right now, the burning of the flag would be illegal, but it is not. The Supremes decided that this falls under the First Amendment.
What I believe you were talking about is a Federation vs a Confederation. if you have a country, like ours that has been ordained as a federation, you cannot dissolve it or run away from it, hence the Civil War. For that not to happen to them, the South formed a Confederacy, which you can leave whenever you want. That's the difference between Federal and Confederate governments.
If we have a second Civil War (God forbid) is not because of the Sedition Act of 1918 (please, let me know were you can find a Sedition Act of 1861), it would be because some of the States vote to secede or do the secession on there own. We are a federation not a confederation.
We DO NOT have to have a war to fix things. Lets try to do it the peaceful way. I do not like the sound of the word "war" when we have a remedy. We need to declare war on ignorance, on hate, on disinformation... on all the negative things that some people create. The rest of us need to strengthen the weak and teach the ignorant the truth.
@tgraf
Our government was created with three separate but equal branches of government: Legislative (House and Senate), Judicial (SCOTUS), and Administrative (President). They are equal in terms of what is known as "Check and Balances", each one will check the other. This means that, since the SCOTUS said that the pro-choice right is not in the Constitution (which is true), the Legislative needs to make laws to give us that right. It is NOT Biden right now. Why? because there are Democratic elected people that are NOT pro-choice and a law that could be sign by the President will not be backed by our own majority in Congress. So, the legislators that are shouting at the President, asking for his intervention, should shut up, put their head to work, their butts on a chair, and start writing laws. Again, since it is not in the Constitution, we can have it as any other law enacted by Congress.
By the way, abortion is not in the Constitution explicitly BUT IT IS there implicitly. Let me explain. The First Amendment gives us the right to speak. It is written there, explicitly. Now, the implicit rights are the ones that SCOTUS interprets are derived from the U.S. Constitution. For example,
"The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that a right to freedom of association and belief is implicit in the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedom of assembly is recognized as a human right under article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt when she was our delegate to the United Nations (it was ratified by the U.S. also)
Hope I clarified your question, @tgraf
So get this, I overheard a conversation tonight in which a nurse practitioner who had previously worked at a medical facility that provided abortion services (among many other services), said that she walked past abortion protesters every morning when entering the building to go to work.
One day, she was surprised to see a regular anti-abortion protester in her office seeking abortion services. After the procedure, the patient told the nurse that her own circumstances were exceptional and that she was still opposed to abortion. A few days later, the patient was outside the clinic protesting again.
This medical provider continued to say that she was surprised to learn from her colleagues that many of them had similar experiences and that it was well known within their professional circles that anti-abortionists seek abortion services for themselves or their pregnant daughters but politically continue to work to make it illegal! Hard to get my head around this...
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
Things are already very bad in TX. I am very serious, please come to CA a and stay with me if you or any of your daughters or children with uteruses need help. I have 3 very close woman friends with young daughters who live in TX and shared this story on Twitter with them awhile back (post leak/pre decision)
https://twitter.com/txnewsprincess/status/1526917931766104071?s=20&t=L4tjGlRQl0UOi98kQ5guvA
now this is terrifying but it feels like a one off story when it’s something you see on Twitter. On Friday another one of my good guy friends who lives in Dallas told me that in January his wife was having a miscarriage. They went to the pharmacy to pick up the abortion pill to clear the fetus and the pharmacist loudly said to the room “YOU ARE HAVING AN ABORTION?!?” and made her explain herself in front of everyone. This pill did not work and her male OB refused to send another pill and they had to hurriedly find a new OB who is a woman as she was going septic (my friend said his wife was so sick and swollen from the sepsis) and the OB a had to perform the emergency procedure in her. She is still recovering from this.
I am going to be doing what I can to help women across the country but want this community to know they have a safe space with me in Los Angeles if they need it.
Thank you, @lizzie. I did know all of that, and I am also aware of the information that April provided. My question was more rhetorical, intended to try to make people think realistically given the current situation in the Senate.
Yes, Congress can expand the court, and yes, Congress can impeach/remove SCOTUS justices. However, as I have said earlier in this thread, the House can pass whatever bills it wants, but the Senate also has to pass those bills before they become law, and given the 48 D's vs 50 R's + 2 DINOs who have shown no interest in doing what is right and just for the country or its people, do you think they would suddenly change their minds now? I highly doubt it. They would more likely double down, particularly in the case of impeachment of a SCOTUS justice. Even if the House were to pass Articles against a justice, the trial would still be in the Senate. The Senate refused - twice - to convict and remove TFG for obvious "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which they had ample evidence and proof. I seriously doubt they would convict and remove a SCOTUS justice on Articles under which they have no direct proof that he actually committed any crime. The R's would inevitably call any such attempt "politically motivated" and a stunt/witch-hunt and refuse to convict yet again.
In addition, Justice Thomas' wife Ginny is the one who is in the line of fire here, not the Justice himself. The only charge the House could reasonably come up with would be Justice Thomas' failure to recuse himself from cases regarding the insurrection, which his wife was provably involved in planning/orchestrating. However, since that failure to recuse did not affect the outcome of those cases, even that would likely be a useless gesture and would still result in nothing more than a media circus and more bad press for the D's. Unfortunately, the D's are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
As far as expanding the court is concerned, I fully agree that needs doing, but again, even if the House passed a bill to do so, the 50 +2 mob would shoot that down before it even hits the floor for the same reason: "politically motivated". @April's assertion that it would only require 54 votes in the Senate isn't quite correct because in order to get past the inevitable threat of a filibuster, they would need 60 votes just to bring it to the floor. Yes, there are procedural methods to get around that, but assuming it made it past that hurdle, they would then still need 51 votes, and there are only 48 that can be counted on. I'm sure Manchin and Sinema are reveling in the attention they're getting from being the deciding votes on these incredibly important issues, but two people are essentially holding this country hostage to the R's by refusing to do what I'm sure they know is right.
There is no immediate solution, and I really wish people would stop assuming there is anything that Mr. Biden or the D's can do because there isn't. The only answer at this point is to work triply hard to pick up at least 2-3 seats in the Senate in November so that the two DINO's can be relegated to the back bench again and rendered completely ineffective.
@laura-f I know it is probably impossible to actually secede but my point was just that this objective was written into the Texas Republican platform and so it seems to confirm some of the predictions here that the US might eventually separate into more than one country.
@2ndfdl
Wow! Thank you for posting a link to this 'supporting' document. Talk about cognitive dissonance.....
This article provides specific examples of the phenomenon I described, anti-abortionists who seek abortions and then return to their anti-abortion stances
Here is the link again so folks don't have to going looking:
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
Of course, the President has the authority to try to do it. For us to have a majority we will need 4 more. The problem that the jurist see is that SCOTUS will become a monster. Meaning, it will work for us now, but the next Republican president will do the same, and the next one, the same, and the next one the same, and so forth... Personally, I wouldn't mind it right now, but I believe this Republican, disguised as a Democrat, Manchin, will oppose it. Remember, the Justices have to be ratified by the Senate.
@laura-f Just out of curiosity, what is the means by which Congress could rein in the Supreme Court?
All of this is presuming the filibuster is a non-issue, but Congress has the rights to:
- Impeach judges that perjure themselves
- Cancel unfair SCOTUS rulings via legislation
- Increase (or decrease) the number of justices
@Laura F
We cannot decrease the number of Justices. The position is for life. I would love to see them impeached (specially the creepy Kavanaugh). They can be impeached for saying that Roe v Wade was "settled law", as they literally said. It is perjury. But, you know? It could be difficult to prove, because they can say: "Oh, I just changed my mind".
Cancel rulings if they are only implicit (according to SCOTUS) in the Constitution, or not found in the Constitution. Another thing is to legislate around those decisions, meaning legislate on things that were not said or decided by SCOTUS in that particular case.
@tgraf66 -
The Constitution provides a number of paths by which Congress can restrain and discipline a rogue court.
It can impeach and remove justices. It can increase or decrease the size of the court itself (at its inception, the Supreme Court had only six members). It can strip the court of its jurisdiction over certain issues or it can weaken its power of judicial review by requiring a supermajority of justices to sign off on any decision that overturns a law. Congress can also rebuke the court with legislation that simply cancels the decision in question. It needs the political will to do any of this, which is sadly lacking at present. I have hope that we will find the will and the people who will lead the.
It has often been true in history that change comes from common people who rouse the hearts and minds of society to demand change. Then the politicians see the parade and get in front to lead. Think of someone like Greta Thunberg as example.
It can strip the court of its jurisdiction over certain issues or it can weaken its power of judicial review by requiring a supermajority of justices to sign off on any decision that overturns a law. Congress can also rebuke the court with legislation that simply cancels the decision in question.
I was not aware of the first two, so thank you for educating me. :-) I do have a couple of questions, though.
For the first one, if that were done, would a case that normally could be appealed to SCOTUS then have to stand on the decision of whatever lower court decided it? That seems rather dangerous to me, since many of the 5-4 precedents that expanded freedoms were only in front of SCOTUS because of the appeal process, to-wit, Obergefell, Brown, and Loving.
In the second, Roe was not a law; it was a precedent, so I'm not sure how that applies here. If that condition were active, Roe would never have been precedent in the first place since the original decision was also 5-4.
In the case of the third one you mentioned, how does that work? I'm certainly not a Constitutional scholar nor am I familiar with all of the relevant precedent, but from where does that power derive? I don't recall anything in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to reverse or negate SCOTUS decisions except perhaps by attempting to codify the issue into a law that makes the decision moot. Even in that case, couldn't a suit be brought to SCOTUS as the Court of First Instance - by an entity with standing to do so, of course -- a State, perhaps - charging that any such new law would be unconstitutional based on the precedent the decision set in the first place?
@Laura F
We cannot decrease the number of Justices. The position is for life. I would love to see them impeached (specially the creepy Kavanaugh). They can be impeached for saying that Roe v Wade was "settled law", as they literally said. It is perjury. But, you know? It could be difficult to prove, because they can say: "Oh, I just changed my mind".
Cancel rulings if they are only implicit (according to SCOTUS) in the Constitution, or not found in the Constitution. Another thing is to legislate around those decisions, meaning legislate on things that were not said or decided by SCOTUS in that particular case.
1. Congress CAN decrease as well as increase, but of course decreasing would be idiotic.
2. Cancel = by legislation, sorry if that wasn't clear.