Procrustes Stretched
Dante's Manifesto
Great article by Greenhouse. Personally, I have immense respect her opinions. While many see her advocacy for abortion rights, and her criticism of conservative religious values as proof of her being a liberal or leftist, I disagree. I've seen her as a liberal Jew in a sense few grasp. Liberal Jews can have quite moderate or conservative views on many issues of the day.
One thing is for certain, Greenhouse's grasp of the issues affecting the Court are seriously respected in most all corners.
The gun issue: Seeing Thomas standing alone is not surprising. He is a stuck-in-the-mud ideologue. My problems with Justice Thomas is that he views philosophical and ideological principles as things man was put on Earth to serve, not the other way around. Thomas' judicial philosophy is based on originalism and textualism. Too bad those views have taken hold over the last so many decades. Things will eventually come full circle and change this. These rulings on the 2nd amendment issues will help move things along.
The nine members of the Supreme Court peered over a precipice. A disagreeable choice loomed before them.
They could apply their two-year-old gun-rights precedent, as a lower court had, and declare unconstitutional a federal law aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of individuals under court-issued restraining orders for domestic violence. If they endorsed such an extreme outcome, they knew, they would be taking down not only a 30-year-old law but also perhaps even the court itself, already at a near low in public esteem. Or they could step back from the edge, relaxing their embrace of the Second Amendment just enough to issue a judicially worded “never mind.”
Eight justices decided not to make the leap — all but Justice Clarence Thomas, clinging tightly to the precedent on which five of the others had joined him only two years earlier as he went over the edge. He was left alone on the bottom to complain forlornly that the court had failed to “point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence.”
Of course, I’m taking a few liberties here; I can’t know whether any of the justices understood their dilemma in quite this way. But it’s impossible to see the outcome in United States v. Rahimi as anything other than an exercise in institutional self-preservation. It certainly wasn’t an exercise in judicial coherence. While Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion garnered eight votes, five members of his majority felt impelled to express their own contrasting if not exactly conflicting views in separate opinions.
www.nytimes.com
note: people like OhPleaseJustQuit will try an affect the thread without stating what could be considered fake news about the article.
One thing is for certain, Greenhouse's grasp of the issues affecting the Court are seriously respected in most all corners.
The gun issue: Seeing Thomas standing alone is not surprising. He is a stuck-in-the-mud ideologue. My problems with Justice Thomas is that he views philosophical and ideological principles as things man was put on Earth to serve, not the other way around. Thomas' judicial philosophy is based on originalism and textualism. Too bad those views have taken hold over the last so many decades. Things will eventually come full circle and change this. These rulings on the 2nd amendment issues will help move things along.
The nine members of the Supreme Court peered over a precipice. A disagreeable choice loomed before them.
They could apply their two-year-old gun-rights precedent, as a lower court had, and declare unconstitutional a federal law aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of individuals under court-issued restraining orders for domestic violence. If they endorsed such an extreme outcome, they knew, they would be taking down not only a 30-year-old law but also perhaps even the court itself, already at a near low in public esteem. Or they could step back from the edge, relaxing their embrace of the Second Amendment just enough to issue a judicially worded “never mind.”
Eight justices decided not to make the leap — all but Justice Clarence Thomas, clinging tightly to the precedent on which five of the others had joined him only two years earlier as he went over the edge. He was left alone on the bottom to complain forlornly that the court had failed to “point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence.”
Of course, I’m taking a few liberties here; I can’t know whether any of the justices understood their dilemma in quite this way. But it’s impossible to see the outcome in United States v. Rahimi as anything other than an exercise in institutional self-preservation. It certainly wasn’t an exercise in judicial coherence. While Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion garnered eight votes, five members of his majority felt impelled to express their own contrasting if not exactly conflicting views in separate opinions.
Opinion | The Supreme Court Steps Back From the Edge
It’s impossible to see the court’s decision upholding a law disarming domestic abusers as anything but an exercise in institutional self-preservation.
note: people like OhPleaseJustQuit will try an affect the thread without stating what could be considered fake news about the article.
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