One of the things you could count on at the Supreme Court, regardless of whether you agreed with it, was some legal wisdom about whatever was being argued. You know, something that revealed that the Court member had, indeed, been legally trained and was legally thoughtful in a way that the average person, even one with a college education, couldn't achieve because they simply not put in the time or purposeful thought.
They'd come forward with legal phraseology, the combination of words that the rest of us used but in ways that described ideas we hadn't thought of. That would raise the discussion above anything done on the street. Of course, that's what they were there for--to figure out decisions nobody else could.
In terms of the legal concepts, then, Supreme Court members were simply smarter than we were. And that's to be expected.
That's why I blanched when I heard Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by ex-, say very casually that if a woman became pregnant and didn't want the baby, all she needed to do was bring it to a legally arranged place within her state--police station, hospital, or the like--and drop it off. There. Done. Then the child would be adopted. That simple.
That sounds like any woman who's had seven kids without a thought of terminating any of them, restricted by her understanding of whatever her religion dictates. It also sounds like millions of conversations had by regular, average people like me for years now. That made me the equivalent to a Supreme Court justice, because I'd had such a discussion thirty years ago.
It makes you wonder: If someone like her, raised to the highest legal position possible in this land, simply narrowing the argument against abortion down to such a simple issue, first of all, what's this doing at the Supreme Court at all? And secondly, what's she doing sitting on the highest court, when we could have gotten someone with far more brains, or perhaps the desire to use them?
This is why she and Clarence Thomas, as biased as anyone who's ever served on the Court, went out not long ago and tried to convince the at-large public that they weren't being political. Yes, they were, and yes, they are. And saying so doesn't make it so. Their attempt at persuasion landed with a decided thump.
Don't believe what your eyes tell you, they're saying: Believe what we say. Someone else tried that not too terribly long ago. And he will do it again.
They were preparing the public for what they are surely going to do--revert us backwards fifty years to a moment when women will have to travel hundreds of miles or sneak around trying to find doctors willing to break laws to give them the right they've had to terminate pregnancies because, within limits previously stated, it's nobody's damn business what they do with their bodies.
I don't think they are intentionally being evil. I think, in the name of hyper-applied religion that will forever go unstated, they are submitting to what they believe to be God's law, instead of common law. That goes back way-way before the writing of the very Constitution that they will be shoehorning their ruling into, stipulating that since the word "privacy" isn't specifically mentioned in there, it doesn't and shouldn't apply.
That will create a police state here. Not only will authorities be able to destroy the very meaning of privacy with respect to control that women need to have over their bodies, it will also lead to searches and seizures that will smash the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to tiny bits, rendering it meaningless. For the meaning of "privacy" will not be restricted only to women trying to end pregnancies. Wait and see.
It will mean something else, too, in terms of the Supreme Court's legitimacy. Sonia Sotomayor had a point: Taking away fifty years of precedent, failing to rise above the politics of the matter, will make people's impressions of the Court and its meaning to be far different. Consensus will no longer be possible, even available. It'll just be a numbers game. The moral value of its ruling will be diluted, and people will be no longer paying much attention. That Amy Coney Barrett tried to plead the opposite will be lost in the weeds.
I have said it here before and I'll say it again: If you restrict the meaning of the Constitution to what it merely states explicitly, you are by its very nature eliminating what John Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison: That the Supreme Court gets to interpret what the Constitution says and means. Why? Because he declared it to be so, not because the text of the Constitution dictated it. It seemed to make sense at the time, and has through the present day. That doesn't mean it will last forever, though.
Someone's going to come along and simply overrule whatever the Supreme Court says should be the law of the land, and say that long, long ago--1803, to be exact--John Marshall declared something he shouldn't have declared, and that the Supreme Court is there only to rule upon conflicts between states--which is the original intent of the document. They might even make it sound absolutely brilliant, as if nobody has thought of it before. But the purpose will merely be to dodge a ruling they don't like, and avoid enforceability and responsibility.
See? Such a widely meaningful concept as "originalism" can, too, be turned on its head and mean exactly what someone with too much power wants it to mean. I have no idea why nobody else has written about this, but I see it clearly. Words only mean what they do as applied to circumstances and have general acceptance, but when someone explodes it and has the force necessary to back it up, the applicability shifts dramatically.
Such a statement will far more officially make the Supreme Court meaningless. And if it is, then all courts beneath it will also be meaningless, for they will lack the necessity to appeal to higher courts. And when courts are meaningless, then the force of law belongs to the entity with the most physical force behind it. That may not become evident immediately, but test upon test, circumstance upon circumstance, will reveal it. That is the gateway to fascism.
The unintended consequences of this upcoming devastating ruling will be themselves devastating. I fear for the country and the deepening divisions that will result. Not only pregnant women will be affected; we are all very likely to pay. That Amy Coney Barrett doesn't get that, that she can't see the greater wisdom, reflects a diminished capability of the Supreme Court that's supposed to stabilize our world, but in fact will unravel it.
Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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