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Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Courts and the Law Headline Archives (2024)

For the most part, the articles/columns linked below appear in chronological order, beginning with the earliest. 


2024:
Previous Courts headline archives are contained in a post at the end of each year and linked below:


20232022202120202019201820172016201520142008-2013

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Courts and the Law Headline Archives (2023)

For the most part, the articles/columns linked below appear in chronological order, beginning with the earliest. 


2023:
Previous Courts headline archives are contained in a post at the end of each year and linked below:


2022202120202019201820172016201520142008-2013

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Courts and the Law Headline Archives (2022)

For the most part, the articles/columns linked below appear in chronological order, beginning with the earliest. 


2022:
Previous Courts headline archives are contained in a post at the end of each year and linked below:


202120202019201820172016201520142008-2013

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Like Roe, Obergefell Needs to Go

In overturning the appalling judicial activism of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), which, in its infamous Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion at any stage of pregnancy throughout the U.S., the current SCOTUS writes,

For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law). After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature…

At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” …

We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In other words, whatever one thinks of killing the unborn, the Roe decision of 1973 invented a Constitutional “right” and robbed Americans of the freedom to govern themselves. The result of Dobbs was to reverse this egregious legal error. As soon as it’s given the opportunity, today’s SCOTUS should do the same with the awful Obergefell ruling that forcefully legalized same-sex “marriage” throughout the U.S.

Like Roe, the majority in Obergefell largely relied on the Fourteenth Amendment to justify nullifying marriage laws in dozens of U.S. states. The majority in Obergefell concluded:

Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

The right of same-sex couples to marry that is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment is derived, too, from that Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way, though they set forth independent principles.

Likewise, as in Roe, the five to four Obergefell majority discovered a “right” that heretofore had escaped U.S. citizens, legislatures, and courts for well over two centuries. And again the SCOTUS mistook itself for a legislative body. As John Roberts noted in his dissent:

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” …

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage… In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.

Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage…Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law.

Additionally, in his concurring dissent, the late-great Justice Scalia rightly concluded:

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance. Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

As I noted at the time, and as did The New York Times, as recently as 2009, 31 U.S. states had put same-sex marriage before its electorate, and by an overwhelming majority (an average of 67.5%), U.S. citizens rejected same-sex “marriage” in every case. This included very liberal states such as Maine, California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Going even further, 29 states amended their constitutions in order to ban same-sex marriage and also specifically defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Furthermore, many states also banned any sort of civil unions and refused to recognize same-sex “marriages” legalized by other states. All of this was rendered moot by a mere five to four majority in Obergefell.

Again, there’s no other institution in the history of humanity with more “precedent” than marriage as the union of one man and one woman. As they did with abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court should put this grave matter back into the hands of U.S. citizens and their legislators.

(See a version of this column at American Thinker and The Blue State Conservative.)

Copyright 2022, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Elaine Benes (of Seinfeld) Got Abortion "Rights" Right

In 1994, in the episode entitled "The Couch," Elaine Benes, a fictional character on NBC's Seinfeld, perfectly captured the modern left's views on abortion "rights." 

 

After telling a story of his mother's forced abortion, and revealing his opposition to killing children in the womb, Poppy declares, "So on this issue there's no debate, and no intelligent person can think differently." Elaine replies, "Well Poppy, I think differently!" Poppy asks, "And what gives you the right to do that?" Elaine tellingly--and emphatically--responds, "The Supreme Court gives me the right to do that!" 

I'm not sure if the writers of Seinfeld were attempting--if anything--to accomplish with that last line quoted above, but the notion that U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) gave one "the right" to kill a child in the womb is exactly what happened in 1973. In other words, with its infamous ruling in Roe, the United States Supreme Court simply--and tragically--invented a "right" to kill children in the womb. 

As the recent majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson (which rightly overturned the decision in Roe v. Wade) notes, "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely..."

So of course, what the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can taketh away, and that's exactly what happened in Dobbs. The left has long relied on the courts to give it what it couldn't accomplish through the democratic, legislative process. With Dobbs, the current SCOTUS put a halt to that with abortion. This should happen with a litany of issues near and dear to the modern left, including same-sex "marriage." 

Copyright 2022, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the 
The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com



Friday, May 6, 2022

Leak of Dobbs Decision Shines Further Light on the Evils of the Modern Left

For decades, the American left has furthered its agenda via leftists on U.S. courts. Thus, as I have previously noted, in order to get their way on a wide array of issues—abortion, marriage, LGBT issues, immigration, and the like—democrats have not had to win elections. They merely needed control of the courts. With right-minded originalists replacing authoritarian leftists on courts throughout America, the left’s hold on state and federal courts (much credit to President Trump!) has waned. This is especially true with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

Given its obsession with sex, among leftists, no issues are held in higher regard than abortion and anything related to the perverse LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION agenda. Sexual perversion has become a sacrament among the modern left , and tens-of-millions of the most helpless and defenseless among us have literally been sacrificed in the name of “Do as Thou Wilt” in the sexual realm. Because they’ve been unable to get it done legislatively, much of the American left’s agenda accomplishments on these matters have happened via U.S. courts.

Thus the American left’s vitriolic reaction upon the egregious leak of a supposed SCOTUS majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson—which would overturn Roe v. Wade—should surprise no one. The leak was almost certainly a political stunt intended to intimidate pro-life justices, politicians, and citizens alike. This is what those who have made a god of government do. The left should make note: What the government giveth, the government can taketh away.

When one makes a god of government, virtually everything gets politicized. When most everything is politicized, much gets perverted. To keep their evil agenda alive, the left must constantly distort, deceive, and demonize. This was on clear display after the Dobbs opinion leak.

After the leak was announced, Hillary Clinton tweeted that reversing Roe would “will kill and subjugate women.” President Biden wondered if the next move for conservatives (i.e. the “MAGA crowd”) would be to make laws that prevent “children who are LGBT” from being in “classrooms with other children.”

Vice President Kamala Harris used the tired argument that “opponents of Roe want to punish women and take away their rights to make decisions about their own bodies.” Democrat representative Hakeem Jeffries added that the Dobbs opinion happened because the “radical right stole two seats on the Supreme Court.” References to The Handmaid’s Tale and the Dark Ages were rampant (thanks Libs of TikTok!).

The idea that reversing Roe would end “access to abortion” in the U.S. was a common refrain among the hyperbolic left. As many on the right side of this issue have long pointed out, this is nowhere close to the truth. Even if Roe is finally overturned—because such a decision would merely return the matter to individual states—tragically, throughout much of America, abortion would remain as legal as it is today. Many Democrat-dominated states have been expanding their abortion laws in anticipation of the fall of Roe.

The anger on display by leftists after the Dobbs leak is revealing and scary. A recent Mollie Hemingway encounter at the Supreme Court was sadly not that uncommon:

As now often is the case with the LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION apologists (e.g., “Drag Queen Story Hour” and the like), pro-abortionists haven become more brazen in their defense of their so-called “right” to kill the most helpless and defenseless among us. Demonic-like anger is frequently on display when dealing with pro-abortionists. Decades of silence by many Christians—most tellingly, even during church services—on these grave moral issues has emboldened those steeped in darkness. This MUST change!

The calls for violence after the Dobbs leak were not hard to find. This was well chronicled by Jordan Boyd at The Federalist. Shortly after the leak surfaced, Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, tweeted, “Seriously, shout out to whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court who said ‘f-ck it! Let’s burn this place down.’”

Ms. Boyd also notes,

Other blue checkmarks on Twitter called for the nation, its institutions, and the highest court in the land to literally and figuratively burn to the ground.

Journalists were among the greatest offenders who publicly endorsed violence against justices who vote in favor of returning the abortion lawmaking back to the states.

When conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey noted that “conservative justices will have their lives and the lives of their families threatened,” The Nation’s Washington D.C. Correspondent Aída Chávez replied “good.”

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett directly threatened Justice Samuel Alito, who reportedly authored the majority opinion, according to Politico.

“OK, Alito, I’ll call your ‘enflamed debate’ & ‘deepened division’ and raise you with millions of angry women in the streets. You #GOP folks want to play poker? Show your hand and watch what happens,” she wrote.

Given the wicked Summer of Rage that we witnessed in 2020, none of this should be taken lightly. Additionally, the left is now directly threatening conservative Supreme Court Justices. As Breitbart reports,

Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch are all targets by an organization called, “Ruth Sent Us.” The organization has published the justices’ supposed home addresses online for the radical protestors to locate…

The website also asked protestors to “rise up May 8-15 and beyond… At the homes of the six extremist justices, three in Virginia and three in Maryland.” The site says the main protest is scheduled for May 11.

Again, none of this should be taken lightly. We’ve seen the awful consequences of leftist policies on plain display for years now in the Democrat-dominated cities across America. Arson, thefts, assaults, murders, and the like have exploded where leftism rules and leftists abound. If given enough cover by their allies in the drive-by media and the Democrat Party, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see violence visited upon conservative Justices.

However—and let this be a lesson to you John Roberts—this is NOT a time for weakness! The left cannot be appeased. They must be defeated—politically, spiritually, and so on. The best defense against their rampant evil is the light of the truth, whatever consequences it brings.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2022, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the 
The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com


 

 

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Even SCOTUS Leftists Have to Lie to Further the Left’s Wuhan Virus Narrative

Make no mistake about it, leftists lie. This is especially true of leftists in politics and the media. In fact, on most any matter dear to the left’s perverse agenda, one is safer assuming that the leftist you’re hearing or reading is lying. Thus, almost no one should’ve been surprised at the wild (and numerous) lies hurled by Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor during oral arguments over the Biden Administration’s private sector Wuhan Virus vaccine mandate.

Early in the hearing, Justice Kagan called the Wuhan Virus “the greatest public health danger that this country has faced in the last century.” She added, “More and more people are dying every day. More and more people are getting sick every day. I don’t mean to be dramatic here. I’m just sort of stating facts.” I suppose “sort of stating facts” is like “sort of telling the truth,” but it is really just a leftist’s way of saying “I’m feeding you a crock of crap!”

Of course, Kagan’s statements here are premised on the notion that we can even trust the U.S. Wuhan Virus numbers—we can’t. But even if we could, the number of Wuhan Virus deaths in the U.S. are lower than they were in late August of last year, and far lower than they were when (early December of 2020) then President-elect Biden said that “No — I don’t think it [Wuhan Virus vaccine] should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory.”

Later in her exchange with Scott Keller, seemingly defending Biden’s mandate, Kagan stated,

We all know what the best policy is. I mean, by this point, two years later, we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated and to prevent dangerous illness and death is for people to get vaccinated. That is by far the best. The second best is to wear masks.

These statements are worse than her others. Two years into this virus, there’s little in the data that show that the “best way to prevent spread” of the Wuhan Virus is to get people vaccinated. On the contrary, vaccines haven’t stopped the spread of the Wuhan Virus. Some of the most infected places in the U.S. are those with some of the highest rates of vaccination and mask use.

Tellingly, these (Democrat dominated and led) parts of the U.S. have also enacted lengthy and widespread mask mandates. None of this has been effective in preventing the spread of the Wuhan Virus. How many more times must we tell leftists that masks (especially cloth masks) are nearly useless in stopping or even slowing the spread of the Wuhan Virus?!

Justice Breyer told Mr. Keller,

The hospitals are today, yesterday, full, almost to the point of the maximum they’ve ever been in this disease, okay? And you heard references, studies, I mean, they—they vary, but some of them say that the hospitalization is 90 percent or maybe 60 percent or maybe 80 percent, but a big percent, filled up yesterday or the day before with people who are not vaccinated, okay? So that’s—we’re talking about now.

These statements are patently false. U.S. hospitals are not full of Wuhan Virus patients. They are not “full” of patients in general. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), only about 17 percent of all U.S. hospital beds are occupied by Wuhan Virus patients. Breyer seems to have no idea what the number is. There’s a vast difference in 60 percent capacity vs. 90 percent capacity, yet Breyer tosses both numbers out.

The most egregious lies on the Wuhan Virus during the mandate arguments were uttered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She declares that “Omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as Delta did.” This is false. She then stated that “We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity.” Maybe some are, but most are not.

The biggest lie of the day was when Sotomayor said, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in—in serious condition and many on ventilators.” Whatever metric one wants to use, at no point during this tragic episode have children been in “serious” danger from the Wuhan Virus. In two years of this, there hasn’t been a total of 100,000 children hospitalized in the U.S. due to the Wuhan Virus. Again according to DHHS data, currently there’s just over 3,300 U.S. children in the hospital with the Wuhan Virus.

Note that is with the Wuhan Virus, not from the Wuhan Virus. Even Fauci himself recently admitted “If you look at the children [who] are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID.” U.S. children have suffered far more from the foolish lockdowns, mask mandates, and Wuhan Virus vaccines than they have from the virus itself.

If you’re going to lie to further a narrative, you should at least be good at it—especially if you’re sitting on the highest court in the land. This was indeed an embarrassing effort by the lying left!

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2022, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the 
The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com


Friday, December 31, 2021

Courts and the Law Headline Archives (2021)

For the most part, the articles/columns linked below appear in chronological order, beginning with the earliest. 


2021:Previous Courts headline archives are contained in a post at the end of each year and linked below:

20202019201820172016201520142008-2013