Our ethically challenged Supreme Court is set to hand down their rulings for the year this month. Given the right-wingers' determination to overturn precedent wherever it suits them, we can anticipate some doozies.
Justices Thomas and Alito in particular have expressly condemned established case law involving privacy rights under the 14th Amendment that has granted citizens the right to contraception, extramarital sex within one's own home, and same-sex marriage. (Those 14th Amendment rulings include mixed-race marriage rights, too, but least one of them seems okay with leaving that precedent alone. Although overturning Loving v. Virginia could render Justice Thomas's ethical dilemma moot.)
The Justices in today's cartoon have already overturned half a century of precedent on abortion rights— which, frankly, shouldn't have surprised anybody as much as it did. The Court had been hacking away at the edges of Roe v. Wade for most of those fifty years, stocked as it has been by every Republican administration with committed anti-abortion activists.
Those Republican Justices are equally committed to bolstering the rights of corporations over individuals of lesser means. The monies, properties, vacations, and campers Justice Thomas has accepted from well-heeled amici curiae would have made Abe Fortas blush. But you really can't argue that such corporate largesse influenced his opinions. That stuff was not so much bribes as loyalty perks.
And then there's United States v. Trump. Handed the open-and-shut question in April of whether a Former President Named Donald Trump has absolute and permanent immunity against being charged with his crimes, the Supremes decided they needed more time to think about it. Perhaps our Constitutional Originalists and their ouija boards will have figured out by the end of June how the Founding Fathers meant to grant Trump immunity without extending the same to Biden, Obama, Clinton, and Carter.
Oyez, oyez, oyez.
No comments:
Post a Comment