Posts Tagged ‘Law’
The phony rape exception to abortion bans | The Hill – Column
Now that the Supreme Court permits states to outlaw abortion, Republican state legislators are bitterly split over whether abortion bans should include exceptions in cases of rape. This is a pointless political fight. Laws forbidding abortion often force women to bear their rapists’ babies. If you don’t want to do that, don’t support abortion prohibitions. For many…
Read MoreForced Labor: Why the Thirteenth Amendment Protects Abortion Rights | Washington Monthly – OpEd
or centuries in America, a class of persons was regarded as a servant caste whose duty was to work for the benefit of others and not themselves. That duty was bound up with a complex legal structure that closed off avenues of escape to ensure they did the work they were expected to do. Their…
Read MoreThe Supreme Court’s squandered opportunity | The Hill – Column
In 2022 the Supreme Court threw away an opportunity to ameliorate the toxic polarization of America. After the unseemly gamesmanship that led to the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, the new conservative majority should have looked for opportunities to, as Barrett said shortly after her confirmation, “convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch…
Read MoreHow the Respect for Marriage Act will heal of one of America’s most toxic divisions | The Hill – Column
The Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), which codifies protection for same-sex marriage, is about to be signed by President Biden. It protects hundreds of thousands of families, but it does more than that. It is a step away from America’s political polarization. That’s not just because Congress managed to get something important done on a bipartisan…
Read MoreWith conservative Supreme Court, religion always wins | The Hill – Column
These days, the Supreme Court presents itself as faithfully following the law, while it does pretty much whatever it wants. For example, it invokes tradition as a constraint on its discretion, while manipulating its meaning to avoid enforcing constitutional provisions it doesn’t like — such as the Establishment Clause. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Court recently overruled…
Read MoreBiden’s gay rights/religious liberty opportunity — The Hill Column
Democrats need another political win — preferably one that appeals to wavering Republican voters. The fraught issue of gay rights and religious liberty offers an opportunity, one that could also help fix the toxic polarization of American politics. Sooner or later the extremists who now dominate the U.S. Supreme Court will confront that issue, and will almost certainly…
Read MoreOriginalism and the football coach’s prayer — The Hill Column
Amid the recent Supreme Court argument over a high school football coach’s demand to lead his players in prayer, the judges lost sight of one of the central purposes of the First Amendment’s prohibition on “establishment of religion” — a purpose that should be of particular concern to the court’s self-styled originalists. The justices’ questions…
Read MoreAkhil Amar and the Dobbs draft — The Hill Column
Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, in a prominent defense of the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, argues in the Wall Street Journal that it contains “nothing radical, illegitimate or improperly political.” Amar supports abortion access but doubts that it is protected by the Constitution. He emphasizes that Roe was poorly reasoned. He thinks that…
Read More‘Roe,’ Precedent, and Reliance — The American Prospect
Supreme Court Justice Alito’s recently leaked draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade is remarkable for many reasons, not least its treatment of precedent. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has observed that, among the reasons why courts follow their own precedents, “the protection of reliance interests is paramount.” People make plans based on the law as they understand it, and abrupt…
Read MoreCancelling Russians is Putinist – The Hill Column
Russian artists and performers are being cancelled out of revulsion against the Ukraine invasion, including many who have denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin. These cancellations perversely presuppose Putin’s own collectivist vision of what nationhood means — a vision that has American fanboys, notably Donald Trump. Nations, strictly speaking, do not exist outside of people’s minds. In Perry Anderson’s famous…
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