Congress must act, starting with protecting a woman’s right to choose. It is now clear that doing so was a big mistake. That would allow Congress to protect through legislation the rights that had been entrusted to the protection of the Supreme Court. There is only one way to rein in the Supreme Court: throw the Republican Party out of office in a landslide. The dissenting opinion in the case that overturned Roe flatly stated that the majority decision “undermines the court’s legitimacy.” Unfortunately, the minority is likely to remain in the minority for a long time, because the extremists are younger and hold a 6-3 majority. Through its recent decisions, the extremist majority has driven its approval rating to a historic low, and disapproval of the Court to new highs. The Supreme Court used to be among the most highly respected institutions in the US. So, though a recent epidemic of mass shootings created such a national outcry that even some Republicans supported a new federal gun law, the Court compensated the National Rifle Association for the loss by striking down a longstanding New York law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed handguns (New York State immediately passed new gun laws, that are likely to end up before the Supreme Court). The Court’s radical wing listens closely to the pro-gun lobby. It doesn’t take long to find the common denominator in the Court’s recent decisions: support causes promoted by Trump’s Republican Party and weaken or outlaw causes favored by the Democratic Party. One of the most consequential rulings of the Court’s just-completed term denied the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue regulations needed to combat climate change.Īccess every new PS commentary, our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content – including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More – and the full PS archive. It is also clear that this Court intends to mount a frontal attack on the executive branch. But this argument endangers many other rights that have been recognized since then, among them the right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ rights.Ĭarried to its logical conclusion, this line of reasoning could even allow states to ban inter-racial marriage, as some did until 1967. Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the majority opinion, based his ruling on the assertion that the Fourteenth Amendment protects only those rights that were generally recognized in 1868, when the amendment was ratified. What qualifies them as extremists is the arguments they used to justify their decision and the indications they gave of how far they might be willing to go in carrying out those arguments. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that recognized a woman’s right to choose whether to give birth. What qualifies the majority of the Court as extremists? It is not merely their decision to overturn Roe v. They include the current Supreme Court, which is dominated by far-right extremists, and Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which placed those extremists on the Court. From abroad, the US is threatened by repressive regimes led by Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia who want to impose an autocratic form of government on the world.īut the threat to the US from the domestic enemies of democracy is even greater.
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