CENTER STAGE

[Uncensored2008]

If you read my posts, then you wouldn't have to make assumptions. History has shown that erroneous decisions do not stand the test of time.

Really?

Dred Scott v. Sanford was never reversed. After the civil war it was irrelevant, yet never was the law reversed.

Plessy v. Ferguson stood from 1896 to 1954.

Roe v. Wade is still on the books - law created by an out of control SCOTUS.

History has shown the opposite of your claim.

If you have a problem with the United States Supreme Court, then place your blame on those who framed and ratified our federal constitution and thus provided us with a judicial branch of federal government that is not subject to the whims and hostilities of shifting factions of the people.

Well that would be rather silly. Apparently you are not familiar with the United States Constitution, nor Constitutional law - but the power of the Court to determine Constitutionality is not derived from the Constitution. This power is one usurped by Chief Justice Marshall in the case Marbury v. Madison.

Our Supreme Court justices are appointed by our elected President subject to the consent of our elected representatives. The justices must decide cases and controversies based on the law and not upon the volatile public opinions that change whenever the wind blows.

Yet we see with the Roberts court that public opinion is the only criterion used in the decision process. Roberts expressly noted that written statute was ignored in order to pursue the social agenda of the court and the administration.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. If the Obergefell decision was based on legal error, then it will not stand the test of time and will be overruled. Until that possible time, however, it is the law of land no matter who favors or disfavors it.

Except of course that we are not. We are a nation of men - where the court holds public opinion and social agendas above written statute.

If you believe the Obergefell decision was erroneous based on a reasonable interpretation and logical application of the facts and law, please present your argument for discussion. If people who contribute to this thread want to slosh around in the gutter and fling about profanity, I don't want to go there with them. I don't mind if you get a little snarky ... if its clever and relevant.

If a written statute on its face or as applied conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, then it is the duty of the Court to say so and declare the statute unconstitutional on its face or as applied. Your unsupported declarations about a "Humpty Dumpty court" constitutes a mere whine and means nothing to me. If you want to discuss any particular case, please bring it to the table. Set forth your premises and conclusion.

Let us instead examine the decision of Roberts to salvage Obama's Fascistcare scheme, King v. Burwell.

Said the dishonorable Justice; (the law) “contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting. . . . Congress wrote key parts of the act behind closed doors, rather than through the traditional legislative process,” “The statutory scheme compels us to reject petitioners’ interpretation because it would
destabilize the individual insurance market in any state with a federal exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the act to avoid,”

So what Roberts said is that the law is irrelevant, instead the social goals of the law are all that matters.

To see this clearly, I cannot state it better than the Honorable Antonin Scalia;

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. “[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.

Faced with overwhelming confirmation that “Exchange established by the State” means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation. None of its tries comes close to establishing the implausible conclusion that Congress used “by the State” to mean “by the State or not by the State.”

 

[Debra K]

If you read my posts, then you wouldn't have to make assumptions. History has shown that erroneous decisions do not stand the test of time.

Really?

Dred Scott v. Sanford was never reversed. After the civil war it was irrelevant, yet never was the law reversed.

Plessy v. Ferguson stood from 1896 to 1954.

Roe v. Wade is still on the books - law created by an out of control SCOTUS.

History has shown the opposite of your claim.

Dred Scott did not stand the test of time. The post-Civil War Amendments rendered Dred Scott a nullity. Despite opposition, slavery survived on American soil for nearly 250 years -- from early colonial days until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson did not stand the test of time. The oppressive "separate but equal" doctrine survived nearly 60 years but was struck down in Brown v. Board of Education.

Roe v. Wade protects the liberty of woman and the right to determine for themselves their own procreative destiny. You have not shown that the decision protecting the liberty of women is erroneous. Be careful what you wish for though. The pendulum swings both ways. If a woman does not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that places her in control over her own body, then government could just as easily determine that birth control and abortions are necessary to serve a legitimate interest in population control. China controls procreation through its one-child policy.

For most of the time our country has been in existence, women were treated as second-class citizens and subordinate to men. It wasn't until 1971 that Supreme Court finally applied the Fourteenth Amendment to gender discrimination for the first time in Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971).

It is often said the wheels of justice move slowly. Progress doesn't move as quickly as we would like it to move. There are many obstructionists standing in the path of progress. That means we need to move our grievances to the courts for resolution. We may not always agree with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but where would we be in the long run without the Supreme Court?

A former U.S. Attorney General declared that it is important for people to view the role of the court in its proper perspective. I think several of the participants on this thread will find this 1957 Department of Justice document interesting: "THE SUPREME COURT"

ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE HERBERT BROWNELL, JR. .
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
at the
55th ANNUAL BANQUET of the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW

From decade to decade in our history, the Supreme Court has been the center of storms of controversy and sectional rancor. Out of every tempest, it has emerged with enhanced prestige, the most highly esteemed judicial tribunal in the world. At times, the Court has been accused of being too reactionary; at other times, too radical. And there have been periods during which it has been simultaneously the target of both the conservative and liberal groups in our nation. It is important at this time for all of our people, and particularly for our lawyers, to view the role of the Court in its proper perspective.

[PLEASE click on the link and keep reading.]​

 

[thereisnospoon]

If you read my posts, then you wouldn't have to make assumptions. History has shown that erroneous decisions do not stand the test of time.

Really?

Dred Scott v. Sanford was never reversed. After the civil war it was irrelevant, yet never was the law reversed.

Plessy v. Ferguson stood from 1896 to 1954.

Roe v. Wade is still on the books - law created by an out of control SCOTUS.

History has shown the opposite of your claim.

Dred Scott did not stand the test of time. The post-Civil War Amendments rendered Dred Scott a nullity. Despite opposition, slavery survived on American soil for nearly 250 years -- from early colonial days until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson did not stand the test of time. The oppressive "separate but equal" doctrine survived nearly 60 years but was struck down in Brown v. Board of Education.

Roe v. Wade protects the liberty of woman and the right to determine for themselves their own procreative destiny. You have not shown that the decision protecting the liberty of women is erroneous. Be careful what you wish for though. The pendulum swings both ways. If a woman does not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that places her in control over her own body, then government could just as easily determine that birth control and abortions are necessary to serve a legitimate interest in population control. China controls procreation through its one-child policy.

For most of the time our country has been in existence, women were treated as second-class citizens and subordinate to men. It wasn't until 1971 that Supreme Court finally applied the Fourteenth Amendment to gender discrimination for the first time in Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971).

It is often said the wheels of justice move slowly. Progress doesn't move as quickly as we would like it to move. There are many obstructionists standing in the path of progress. That means we need to move our grievances to the courts for resolution. We may not always agree with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but where would we be in the long run without the Supreme Court?

A former U.S. Attorney General declared that it is important for people to view the role of the court in its proper perspective. I think several of the participants on this thread will find this 1957 Department of Justice document interesting: "THE SUPREME COURT"

ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE HERBERT BROWNELL, JR. .
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
at the
55th ANNUAL BANQUET of the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW

From decade to decade in our history, the Supreme Court has been the center of storms of controversy and sectional rancor. Out of every tempest, it has emerged with enhanced prestige, the most highly esteemed judicial tribunal in the world. At times, the Court has been accused of being too reactionary; at other times, too radical. And there have been periods during which it has been simultaneously the target of both the conservative and liberal groups in our nation. It is important at this time for all of our people, and particularly for our lawyers, to view the role of the Court in its proper perspective.

[PLEASE click on the link and keep reading.]​

The issue Roe has going against it that had the majority been more Constitutionally conservative, Roe could not have passed muster. Reason, Roe violates the State's Rights Clause in the Tenth amendment. And in a legal stretch it also violates the 14th's "equal protection" clause. On that note, it is simply stated that the unborn child's rights are usurped in favor of the mother's. This is 'safe' for as long as the fetus is not granted the status of "personhood".
The confounding aspect of this is that some states allow criminal sanctions against a suspect who in the course of committing egregious bodily harm or murder of a pregnant woman, the suspect can be charged with also the murder of the fetus.
One issue. I am not 'anti- abortion'. However, i think the States should be left to make their own law on this matter. And quite frankly, there are those states that do have very restrictive laws regarding the termination of pregnancy.

 

[ChrisL]

If you read my posts, then you wouldn't have to make assumptions. History has shown that erroneous decisions do not stand the test of time.

Really?

Dred Scott v. Sanford was never reversed. After the civil war it was irrelevant, yet never was the law reversed.

Plessy v. Ferguson stood from 1896 to 1954.

Roe v. Wade is still on the books - law created by an out of control SCOTUS.

History has shown the opposite of your claim.

Dred Scott did not stand the test of time. The post-Civil War Amendments rendered Dred Scott a nullity. Despite opposition, slavery survived on American soil for nearly 250 years -- from early colonial days until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson did not stand the test of time. The oppressive "separate but equal" doctrine survived nearly 60 years but was struck down in Brown v. Board of Education.

Roe v. Wade protects the liberty of woman and the right to determine for themselves their own procreative destiny. You have not shown that the decision protecting the liberty of women is erroneous. Be careful what you wish for though. The pendulum swings both ways. If a woman does not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that places her in control over her own body, then government could just as easily determine that birth control and abortions are necessary to serve a legitimate interest in population control. China controls procreation through its one-child policy.

For most of the time our country has been in existence, women were treated as second-class citizens and subordinate to men. It wasn't until 1971 that Supreme Court finally applied the Fourteenth Amendment to gender discrimination for the first time in Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971).

It is often said the wheels of justice move slowly. Progress doesn't move as quickly as we would like it to move. There are many obstructionists standing in the path of progress. That means we need to move our grievances to the courts for resolution. We may not always agree with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but where would we be in the long run without the Supreme Court?

A former U.S. Attorney General declared that it is important for people to view the role of the court in its proper perspective. I think several of the participants on this thread will find this 1957 Department of Justice document interesting: "THE SUPREME COURT"

ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE HERBERT BROWNELL, JR. .
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
at the
55th ANNUAL BANQUET of the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW

From decade to decade in our history, the Supreme Court has been the center of storms of controversy and sectional rancor. Out of every tempest, it has emerged with enhanced prestige, the most highly esteemed judicial tribunal in the world. At times, the Court has been accused of being too reactionary; at other times, too radical. And there have been periods during which it has been simultaneously the target of both the conservative and liberal groups in our nation. It is important at this time for all of our people, and particularly for our lawyers, to view the role of the Court in its proper perspective.

[PLEASE click on the link and keep reading.]​

The issue Roe has going against it that had the majority been more Constitutionally conservative, Roe could not have passed muster. Reason, Roe violates the State's Rights Clause in the Tenth amendment. And in a legal stretch it also violates the 14th's "equal protection" clause. On that note, it is simply stated that the unborn child's rights are usurped in favor of the mother's. This is 'safe' for as long as the fetus is not granted the status of "personhood".
The confounding aspect of this is that some states allow criminal sanctions against a suspect who in the course of committing egregious bodily harm or murder of a pregnant woman, the suspect can be charged with also the murder of the fetus.
One issue. I am not 'anti- abortion'. However, i think the States should be left to make their own law on this matter. And quite frankly, there are those states that do have very restrictive laws regarding the termination of pregnancy.

The thing is, these women who are dead set against having a baby will self abort. Women have been aborting unwanted pregnancies since ancient times. It is better that they do so under the supervision of a doctor in a medical setting.

 

[Debra K]

If you have a problem with the United States Supreme Court, then place your blame on those who framed and ratified our federal constitution and thus provided us with a judicial branch of federal government that is not subject to the whims and hostilities of shifting factions of the people.

Well that would be rather silly. Apparently you are not familiar with the United States Constitution, nor Constitutional law - but the power of the Court to determine Constitutionality is not derived from the Constitution. This power is one usurped by Chief Justice Marshall in the case Marbury v. Madison.

I don’t love your unwarranted condescension. But I do love the Constitution and have studied it for decades. It is a work of genius.

In very simple words: The framers created the judicial branch under Article III and provided that the judicial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and such inferior courts as Congress may establish. The framers insulated all federal judges from political pressures by providing them with lifetime appointments and guaranteeing that their compensation shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. Thus, the Justices are not subject to the whims or hostilities of shifting factions. Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t care if you criticize the Court’s opinions or call him derogatory names because his job is secure. Your disrespect means nothing to him.

Silly? Back at you. Read the Constitution.

Article III clearly states that the Supreme Court’s judicial power extends to all cases and controversies arising under the Constitution; and Article VI, clause 2, states the Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme law of the land.


If Congress enacts a law in excess of its enumerated powers under the Constitution causing a case or controversy to make its way to the Supreme Court, it is clearly within the Court’s power to declare the federal law unconstitutional.

(Similarly, if a state enacts a law that violates a person’s rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment causing a case or controversy to make its way to the Supreme Court, it is clearly within the Court’s power to declare the state law unconstitutional).

Why? Because we follow an hierarchy of laws wherein the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land … and inferior laws cannot trump the superior law. The allegation that Chief Justice Marshall usurped judicial power to determine constitutionality is a figment of disgruntled minds.

 

[Debra K]

If you read my posts, then you wouldn't have to make assumptions. History has shown that erroneous decisions do not stand the test of time.

Really?

Dred Scott v. Sanford was never reversed. After the civil war it was irrelevant, yet never was the law reversed.

Plessy v. Ferguson stood from 1896 to 1954.

Roe v. Wade is still on the books - law created by an out of control SCOTUS.

History has shown the opposite of your claim.

Dred Scott did not stand the test of time. The post-Civil War Amendments rendered Dred Scott a nullity. Despite opposition, slavery survived on American soil for nearly 250 years -- from early colonial days until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson did not stand the test of time. The oppressive "separate but equal" doctrine survived nearly 60 years but was struck down in Brown v. Board of Education.

Roe v. Wade protects the liberty of woman and the right to determine for themselves their own procreative destiny. You have not shown that the decision protecting the liberty of women is erroneous. Be careful what you wish for though. The pendulum swings both ways. If a woman does not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that places her in control over her own body, then government could just as easily determine that birth control and abortions are necessary to serve a legitimate interest in population control. China controls procreation through its one-child policy.

For most of the time our country has been in existence, women were treated as second-class citizens and subordinate to men. It wasn't until 1971 that Supreme Court finally applied the Fourteenth Amendment to gender discrimination for the first time in Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971).

It is often said the wheels of justice move slowly. Progress doesn't move as quickly as we would like it to move. There are many obstructionists standing in the path of progress. That means we need to move our grievances to the courts for resolution. We may not always agree with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but where would we be in the long run without the Supreme Court?

A former U.S. Attorney General declared that it is important for people to view the role of the court in its proper perspective. I think several of the participants on this thread will find this 1957 Department of Justice document interesting: "THE SUPREME COURT"

ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE HERBERT BROWNELL, JR. .
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
at the
55th ANNUAL BANQUET of the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW

From decade to decade in our history, the Supreme Court has been the center of storms of controversy and sectional rancor. Out of every tempest, it has emerged with enhanced prestige, the most highly esteemed judicial tribunal in the world. At times, the Court has been accused of being too reactionary; at other times, too radical. And there have been periods during which it has been simultaneously the target of both the conservative and liberal groups in our nation. It is important at this time for all of our people, and particularly for our lawyers, to view the role of the Court in its proper perspective.

[PLEASE click on the link and keep reading.]​

The issue Roe has going against it that had the majority been more Constitutionally conservative, Roe could not have passed muster. Reason, Roe violates the State's Rights Clause in the Tenth amendment. And in a legal stretch it also violates the 14th's "equal protection" clause. On that note, it is simply stated that the unborn child's rights are usurped in favor of the mother's. This is 'safe' for as long as the fetus is not granted the status of "personhood".

The confounding aspect of this is that some states allow criminal sanctions against a suspect who in the course of committing egregious bodily harm or murder of a pregnant woman, the suspect can be charged with also the murder of the fetus.
One issue. I am not 'anti- abortion'. However, i think the States should be left to make their own law on this matter. And quite frankly, there are those states that do have very restrictive laws regarding the termination of pregnancy.

Thank you for your response. The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The States do not have any right to enact laws that conflict with the Constitution. Justice Scalia was once interviewed on 60 Minutes. When asked about the connection between his religion and his judicial philosophy, Justice Scalia responded:

"It has nothing to do with how I decide cases. My job is to interpret the Constitution accurately. And indeed, there are anti-abortion people who think that the Constitution requires a state to prohibit abortion. They say that the Equal Protection Clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that's still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that's wrong. I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons. You don't count pregnant women twice."
​

Because the right to determine her own procreative destiny belongs to the woman, her choice to carry her pregnancy to term and deliver a child is also hers and someone can't take that choice away from her against her will ... thus, other than a legal abortion, the state may criminalize conduct that causes the pregnancy to be terminated.

I agree that some states attempt to regulate abortion out of existence. There is a Texas case (Fifth Circuit) that is being appealed to the Supreme Court. Texas abortion case reaches the Court SCOTUSblog

​

 

[Debra K]

Our Supreme Court justices are appointed by our elected President subject to the consent of our elected representatives. The justices must decide cases and controversies based on the law and not upon the volatile public opinions that change whenever the wind blows.

Yet we see with the Roberts court that public opinion is the only criterion used in the decision process. Roberts expressly noted that written statute was ignored in order to pursue the social agenda of the court and the administration.

See response below.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. If the Obergefell decision was based on legal error, then it will not stand the test of time and will be overruled. Until that possible time, however, it is the law of land no matter who favors or disfavors it.

Except of course that we are not. We are a nation of men - where the court holds public opinion and social agendas above written statute.

See response below.

If you believe the Obergefell decision was erroneous based on a reasonable interpretation and logical application of the facts and law, please present your argument for discussion. If people who contribute to this thread want to slosh around in the gutter and fling about profanity, I don't want to go there with them. I don't mind if you get a little snarky ... if its clever and relevant.


If a written statute on its face or as applied conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, then it is the duty of the Court to say so and declare the statute unconstitutional on its face or as applied. Your unsupported declarations about a "Humpty Dumpty court" constitutes a mere whine and means nothing to me. If you want to discuss any particular case, please bring it to the table. Set forth your premises and conclusion.

Let us instead examine the decision of Roberts to salvage Obama's Fascistcare scheme, King v. Burwell.


Said the dishonorable Justice; (the law) “contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting. . . . Congress wrote key parts of the act behind closed doors, rather than through the traditional legislative process,” “The statutory scheme compels us to reject petitioners’ interpretation because it would

destabilize the individual insurance market in any state with a federal exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the act to avoid,”


So what Roberts said is that the law is irrelevant, instead the social goals of the law are all that matters.


To see this clearly, I cannot state it better than the Honorable Antonin Scalia;


Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. “[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.


Faced with overwhelming confirmation that “Exchange established by the State” means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation. None of its tries comes close to establishing the implausible conclusion that Congress used “by the State” to mean “by the State or not by the State.”

There are established rules of statutory interpretation. When one section of the law is part of a larger statutory scheme, the section at issue must be read in light of the scheme as a whole, etc., in order to determine legislative intent and avoid absurd results.


If the Court got the interpretation wrong in light of the scheme as a whole, then Congress has the power to amend the statute to make its intent clear. Congress is a political branch of the government and the Republicans are in control of both houses right now. If they want to, the Republicans can repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act. I understand that some people who dislike the Act were hoping the Roberts Court would latch onto some inartfully drawn language in one section, ignore the Act as a whole, and throw the entire country into disarray … but those hopes did not materialize. The Affordable Healthcare Act is the law of the land until it is repealed or replaced with something else. The Republicans have legislative power and may choose to use it.


You have the right to contact members of Congress and complain about the law, which you dubbed “Obama's Fascistcare scheme”, and petition them to amend or repeal it. If it was truly congressional intent that insurance subsidies would go only to poor people in states with exchanges established by the state and not to poor people who live in states where the federal government established exchanges for those states … then it is a very easy thing for the Republican controlled congress to amend the statutory scheme and make that intent clear. I think you were hoping that the Court would throw the rules of statutory construction out the window and do the Republicans’ work for them so they wouldn’t get blood on their hands, so to speak.


For a lot of reasons, I don’t like the Affordable Healthcare Act either. I don’t like being compelled to pay nearly $1,400 a month to a private “for profit” company for a crappy product or pay the government a financial penalty. I would prefer a single payer system. Neither one of us got what we wanted. But I’m not placing blame at the feet of the Court … the blame belongs in Congress.