Just Wow! Draft Supreme Court Opinion

Well, considering 70% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal, this is very likely to help the Democrats in the November elections.

 

I think it should help Democrats at the State level too but there are issues. Abortion itself can be a very nasty thing regardless of one's legal or philosophical stance. The inevitable debate will be ugly.

 

I'm speaking hypothetically, not predicting an outcome.

Couldn't those statutes be overturned as un-Constitutional and those precedent cases be ignored?

 

Good question. Many State constitutions have their own ERAs. I suppose if Apple decided not to pay female engineers as much as it pays male engineers doing the same work and the Federal labor people assessed some gigantic fine Apple could take the matter into the federal courts and claim that Apple has the right to discriminate. Arguably there's no constitutional authority to support Congress' enactments. What's a bit scarier, though, is that equal protection might be found to apply only to State actors. All kinds of anti-discrimination legislation could be thrown out. This, by the way, is more or less what happened in the early New Deal. The Supreme Court had an...ahem...change of heart once Roosevelt started talking about court-packing.

Interesting times.

 

The more I ponder it, the more I have come to think that it was a conservative aide--or justice--who released the opinion, wanting to ensure the original version saw the light of day. If the final opinion is a watered-down version of this one, you can rest assured this was the case.

I'm thinking of how liberals could have benefitted from the leak, but I'm not sure I see how. Or, maybe, one of them did it for the same reason.

 

Interesting possibility, I had not thought of that. My thought was simply that someone was very upset and therefore decided to break the rules and release the draft ruling. Therefore more likely a Democrat. It might arguably help Democrats if the extra month is used to activate the Democratic base.

 

Ginni Thomas.

 

A trial balloon is typically raised by a supporter rather than an opponent of the measure…

 

It helps for two reasons. First, a significant majority of Americans support abortion rights. This will cause some percent of independents who might have voted for Republicans in November to vote for Democrats instead. Secondly, it fires up the Democratic base and causes more people to come out and vote.

 

Those were coming anyway.

A leak of this kind is almost unprecedented in the history of the Supreme Court. Even in the most radical and controversial cases/decisions, we haven't seen leaks. What you're describing is routine, when this leak is anything but.

No, it's not just to rile up a base that was going to get riled anyway once the decision was announced. In fact, one could argue that it diffuses that energy somewhat, as well as having it occur two months further away from the mid-terms.

In short, I don't think this was political. I think instead it was a result of some internal jousting, either to keep the decision from being watered-down or to try to keep Roberts on board.

 

Last week there was a WSJ editorial that seemed to have inside information on this ruling that turns out to be true! This seems like pretty good evidence that the leak actually came from the right.

 

The results of any investigation will be either (a) a liberal justice or staff member leaked it or (b) they won't announce any result at all.

 

Just finished rereading the draft. Strongly recommended that anyone interested in the subject should do likewise.

 

I've read snippets, like the part where they want more babies for sale.

 

Try reading the whole thing and read it as a lawyer would.

 

As a matter of practical politics, I wonder how a pro-choice candidate for Congress will deal with the accusations of barbarism and immorality from her pro-life opponent.

 

The same way they've been dealing with it for decades.

 

Ignore it and trust to Roe v Wade. But that cover will likely be blown.