disastrous how? To me it seems like the states are starting the 20-30 year process of legislating it themselves that should have happened and been mostly done by now but was instead stopped in its tracks and allowed to fester, strengthening the religious right (which is a very bad thing). The first 15 years will suck as some states try unconstitutional things and get smacked down but you guys will get to a spot where you have slightly different laws by state that most people can agree on and the issue will mostly die down by the end rather than fester and get larger and larger support against it like it has to this point. You can generally tell when the supreme court gets it wrong by whether the issue slides into the background as obviously correct to most people after a generation or two or if the issue gets bigger and bigger and this issue got bigger and bigger. abortion falls into the latter category. (And I love abortion. It's killed so many future criminals you see it in the crime stats. I'm not a crazed religious person, I'm an atheist, so you can't write the above opinion off as that).
The thing is 'doing unconstitutional things and getting smacked down' is no longer a certainty. This Supreme Court has shown itself to wipe their ass with the Constitution, or any law, if it helps either the conservative agenda or Trump.
Yah, you're looking at it on too short a time frame. If enough people are butt hurt about something over a long enough time period, it will get reversed (as you just saw from this very issue that started the discussion). Also, unconstitutional does not mean something you don't like, it means something explicitly outlawed in the constitution. Things like stopping pregnant women from exercising their right to travel, not setting restrictions on abortion to a level higher than I personally would like.
There were constitutional arguments for abortion in Roe. And, coincidently, those constitutional arguments are extremely similar to the ones used in Obergefel.
Meaning, if this court was willing to overturn Roe on those grounds, they could easily overtune Obergefel.
Its a matter of if they have the political will. Which, the answer should theoretically be yes - the supreme Court doesn't care about politics. But this court isn't like other courts, so it might be no. Overturning Obergefel would be very politically unpopular for virtually no gain, even for the Republicans. So, personally, I doubt it's going to happen.
Then maybe that should go back to the states to decide as well. I personally feel their smartest move would be to rule that having government involved in marriage at all is too excessive a limitation on freedom of association and therefore government is out of the business entirely
The problem is a lot of states are stupid and self-destructive. A lot of them are essentially on the welfare of the federal government because they're so economically inept and seem addicted to passing policy that makes their state even less desirable.
If we just let them do whatever, WE pay. I pay. That's not free. They're not sovereign states, they're still part of the union. And that means my hard earned money has to go to making sure fucked up states don't completely shit the bed. Ultimately some place like Louisiana shouldn't even exist. But it does, because we fund their existence through welfare.
I don't want to make millions of Americans lives more shit for some ideological cause that I don't even know makes sense.
Okay, we should leave it to the states. Why? Why should we do that? Because someone 200 years ago said so in the federalist papers? Is that good enough to make life shit for millions of people with absolutely no economic gain?
Also, elephant in the room: this court is not made up of textualists. That's just what they tell you so that what they do sounds justified.
segregation was disallowed under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which is much sounder law (and much more likely to be respected by an originalist since it's pretty obvious what they meant and once you make a black person a person under the law (which is also done by the 14th amendment) it's pretty clear you can't treat them differently than anyone else). Conversely, Roe V Wade relies on some pretty tortured reinterpretation of the right to privacy, which in itself is only kind of guaranteed by a less tortured interpretation of other parts of the constitution.
It's also pretty important to point out here that things are only for the states to decide in so far as you guys haven't made an amendment to make that right part of the constitution. The whole point of this is you can't make up rights that aren't there as the supreme court, you aren't the legislative body. If you want more/different rights there is an amending process to change the constitution and then the supreme court will be bound to uphold your changes as well.
Also, why do I know more about your constitution and governing structure than you appear to? I'm not American, I just appreciate how straightforwardly you guys recognize government will always screw you over and needs to be agressively restrained. I just wish you had realized it was all large organizations and more effectively applied your restrictions to corporations as well.
> Also, why do I know more about your constitution and governing structure than you appear to?
Do you? All you have said here is that you think that the equal protection clause forbidding segregation is more sound than the substantive due process clause forbidding criminalization of abortion. That's not a statement about governing structure. That's a statement about your interpretation of the text. I (and many others) don't think that finding a right to abortion in the text is so difficult.
It is ludicrous to point at an originalist interpretation to justify Brown. It is plainly obvious that the authors of the 14th did not intend it to forbid segregation nor would the public have interpreted it to do so at the time. Yes, there is a cottage industry of law professors seeking to square this circle but it is a ridiculous project. If you insist on originalism being the sole interpretive model of the constitution (which I disagree with) then you don't get to so easily say "well obviously Brown was correct."
I mean, this isn't how it works in reality at all. Texas has been trying to impose its will on other states as well and the very clear goal is to make a lot of these things federally illegal so blue states don't even get a choice. 'Constitutionality' doesn't matter when you have a court that doesn't give a shit about it or precedent.
If the other half of your argument is 'people will eventually get angry enough to demand change' then you're essentially arguing for another civil war to break out to resolve these issues and I don't think you'd like how that outcome ends.
As gently as possible, you've utterly misunderstood reality. The whole system is designed around all levels of government trying to impose their own version of stupid on all the others and providing effective PFO levers that work at varying timescales. You just witnessed a longer term PFO lever being pulled on to overturn an abortion ruling that best case had very weak constitutional grounds to stand on for its existence. There was not anywhere near civil war level violence here. What happened was the court ruling was obviously unjust to enough people that, over time it grew a stronger and stronger movement that influenced judicial appointments over decades via the ballot box.
You've also misunderstood this supreme court. It has swung towards giving a great deal of care about originalism with the argument they should not be making law, the legislators should change the constitution via the legislative pathway if they want change and it is the job of the supreme court to uphold the constitution as written/intended. That context makes it even more likely they were going to overturn abortion because in an originalist context the support for what was done in Roe V Wade is zero. The current judges will die and be replaced and if you want them replaced with people who care less about originalism then you need to adjust your political platform to ensure you can be in power often enough to swing some of those seats. In this regard the system is working perfectly.
No, I understand the Supreme Court perfectly. Their 'Originalism' stance is bullshit because in one breath they claim Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional while in another allowing the blatant violation of individuals constitutional rights.
