Legalities

What kind of a game are we playing here? Everybody wants to apply a different monicker to Rosie. Last week it was metallurgist. This week it is theologian, and then somebody else calls her a constututional law scholar. I think that the folks applying these nicknames are just trying to impress others. Other than that, I can't say much for Rosie either.

R M Kraus

Nice summary of the fever swamp over the PBA decision. Conservatives were told we were overreacting to Chuck Schumer's complaint about Bill Pryor's "strongly held beliefs" as crossing a line. Looks like we were right about that all along. And it didn't take long for that meme to repeat itself after last week's decision. The Left will refuse to see your logic about the voting pattern in Casey - they are in a hurry to yell "theocracy" any chance they get, as if that will resonate with average Americans. Actually, Geoff Stone ought to be embarrassed that he finds himself playing the same tune as Rosie O'Donnell. His constitutional analysis reached the same point as Rosie's, and I'm darn sure that Rosie's never read a Supreme Court case from start to finish. I can't wait to hear Pat Leahy denounce this latest anti-Catholic garbage. How long do you think I'll have to wait?

"Why not speculate that the five justices in the majority happen to like baseball--and therefore are more inclined to appreciate rules? That’s no less relevant or “telling,” as Stone put it, than their religious views."

This seems weak. It seems to me that Professor Stone's speculation is, at once, more relevant and less speculative and, therefore, much more telling than yours is.

Stone's speculation is less speculative than yours because it isn't speculation that the five Justices in the majority were Catholic, only that it was their Catholicity that made them decide as they did. As for your speculation, is it a fact that those same Justices are baseball fans? Perhaps. Perhaps not. You see? Whereas Stone's begins with an established fact and proceeds to a plausible speculation, yours begins with a speculation as well as ends with one. At least Professor Stone has a basis in fact (that the five in the majority were Catholic) for his speculation and so his speculation is nowhere near as speculative as yours is.

However, let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the five Justices in the majority were baseball fans and further assume that they are sticklers for the rules in the game of baseball, it seems much easier to believe that a baseball fan, especially a Roman Catholic one, might, in his judicial rulings, abandon his insistence on rules when it comes to abortion matters than to believe that a Catholic could vote against his Church's doctrinal stance on abortion. Baseball, after all, is just a game. The number of deaths during baseball games over the years is no doubt minuscule compared to the number of deaths during abortions and the rules of baseball probably were irrelevant to any deaths during baseball. Therefore, Professor Stone's speculation seems much more relevant to the outcome in this case than does your speculation

So then, not only is your speculation twice as speculative as Prof. Stone's, it is also nowhere near as telling.

You are right that Professor Stone's speculation is just that. It is just that Stone's speculation is much more relevant than yours and much less speculative.

Scratch an American academic, including many Catholic ones, and one discovers someone who has a problem with the existence of Catholicism.

Thank you, Ms Greenburg, for calling Stone on his pompous, self-serving bloviations.

From your comments above, I notice that Thomas is a convert to Catholicism and theis happened after he joined the court. So obviously, if one adheres to the Know-Nothing bigotry, he must have been a leftist, revisionist hereo before. Yeah, that's what I remember about Thomas, that time when he was a darling of the left, his pre-Catholic days.

Yes, I agree with the sentiment of this post. I'm glad Garnett responded as well.

If the majority depended on Catholic dogma for their conclusions, then mentions of their Catholicism would be legitimate. But they didn't.

It would be equally illegitimate to remark that the dissenters are Jewish and Episcopalian and rely on their religion for their conclusions.

It's also funny that Stone accuses (with no evidence) some serious heavy-weights of deferring to their religion. He is the intellectual inferior of at least Scalia and Roberts, to be sure. None of the justices -- either of the left or right -- need their religion to guide their constitutional conclusions.

"No, the five couldn’t possibly have legal views that that the Constitution doesn’t protect the right to a partial birth abortion."

Via the constitution, the people never gave the federal government the authority to regulate abortion, either. No one has been able to show me in Article I, Section 8 where congress (bipartisanly or not) derived it's authority for this act.

Excellent simple analysis, pointing out the obvious that so many seem to have forgotten. We have 3 branches of government, not an Oligarchy. The Supreme Court is to interpret the law based on it constitutionality, not on the opinions of the day, either in the populance or in international legal circles and opinions. Legislation is the role of Congress, and not that of the Court.

If the argument is that Catholic's are biased toward one ruling and cannot decide the issue objectively, couldn't another argument be made that WOMEN are too close to the issue and should recuse themselves from ruling on such cases?

“If men could get pregnant,”Rosie opines, “abortion would be a sacrament.”

I hate that line, perhaps Rosie should read "Lives of the Saints" to see what pain men (and women) suffered for their faith.

>Via the constitution, the people never gave the federal government the authority to regulate abortion, either. No one has been able to show me in Article I, Section 8 where congress (bipartisanly or not) derived it's authority for this act.

MM - the justices specifically said they could not address the question of a commerce clause challenge because it was not raised below.

I agree - not only is there no Constitutional right to an abortion, there is no Congressional power to regulate abortion either. The whole thing should be a state issue.

The "Subscribe to this blog's feed" does not seem to be working. Please fix. Thank you!

"You are right that Professor Stone's speculation is just that. It is just that Stone's speculation is much more relevant than yours and much less speculative."

A speculation cannot be more or less speculative, no more than a person can be more or less dead. A speculation can be more or less reasonable, but no, not speculative.

The fact that you are illiterate casts a shadow on the validity of your response.

Thank you for challenging the unfortunately common habit of some to characterize a justice and his or her entire capacity for reasoning based upon a singular personal characteristic. People are much more complex than that, and I think we should give judges on both sides of the political spectrum more credit--assuming that they are seeking to honor and follow the law and our Constitution.

"If states are going to be allowed to set up more roadblocks to safe abortions, then those states should also be forced to provide adequate monetary support for the child that's eventually born."

You're talking as if legal changes would have come about entirely apart from changes in attitude about the unborn. Really, such a scenario would signal that the unborn had come to be viewed as worthy of protection in law. Thus, abortions would be understood as very unsafe indeed.

The state does not currently reward parents for protecting their children -- to the contrary, it's a basic expectation. I can't imagine why it should be otherwise if the culture came to value unborn life too.

Medicine-Religion and Politics don't mix well.
The five practicing Catholics on the Supreme Court voted to uphold the ban on "Dilation and Extraction" passed by a Republican Congress, which was practicing medicine without a license, going against the advice of the American Medical Association and the College of Obstetrics. Moreover, in allowing the lack of concern for the health of the mother, makes the fetus responsible for her death if it occurs!
Or is it Congress that will be responsible?
Considering that the Justices are in charge of judging their own conflicts of interest, letting their religious faith influence a decision is not a long step. How much it takes to come to a judgment of letting a mother die in favor of a disabled fetus should be governed by logic and NOT the religious faith and politics of those who passed the law in the first place. Congressional action was based on politics, faith and partisanship, not good medicine, or common sense.

The problem with Stone's remark is that it is speculation which he puts forward as an assertion and settles on as a conclusion in one broad sweep.

No proof is offered. To me, he's just showing his contempt for a reasoning public. So he's a former college dean and provost at the U. of Chicago. That just causes me to hold U. of Chicago in less regard.

Besides, I'm not impressed with a lawyer, particularly a former dean and provost, who is so easily mortified.

“If men could get pregnant,”Rosie opines, “abortion would be a sacrament.”

As far as I can tell, it *is* a sacrament for the Democratic party, and for the likes of Rosie O'Donnell.

If you take the decision this week at its word, it is not premised on a belief that the Constitution fails to protect a right to choose abortion, but instead on the belief that the Constitution does in fact give women a right to make the ultimate choice as to whether to have an abortion, but that the State has such a strong interest in "protecting life" that it can secondguess, cajole, and intimidate women into making the better, "life protective" decision. To hold that position, one needs to have a moral conviction that the choice to have an abortion in all but the most tragic circumstances is an atrocious mistake (not to mention a fundamental distrust for women as autonomous decisionmakers). The fact that a majority of the Court now bases the law on such a bald and controversial moral position certainly should focus our attention on where the Justices in the majority get their sense of moral certainty. Interrogating their common religious tradition is a plausible place to start.