Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows

[Berkut]

As far as legitimacy of the court goes, I'm not sure why Democrats are supposed to be concerned about damaging it.  If anything, they should be aiming to remove it.  Letting the court keep its legitimacy just gives it more power to inflict fatal damage to democracy.

Then the abortion protections go away since Roe is the paper shield that keeps states from banning abortion.

Psssst. That is already going away.

Which is kind of the point.

So you don't want abortion rights to ever come back.

[Tonitrus]

I suppose, if the Dems get killed in the mid terms, and Biden decided not to run again/lame duck it, he could just take the Andrew Jackson route on SC decisions.

[Razgovory]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

[Barrister]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Yes, clearly there are no other options.............

[Iormlund]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Yes, clearly there are no other options.............

Such as?

[Berkut]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Its more recognize it for what it has become after the conservatives were willing to destroy its credibility as a legal institution and turn it into a strictly political tool to enact the conservative agenda, regardless of the will of the people, or the actual legal reality of the US Constitution.

That is really what Shelf is saying - the law doesn't matter. What the Constitution says doesn't matter. What the people actually want SURE as hell doesn't matter (although of course the Supreme Court is not actually mean to represent the will of the people anyway).

Now it is just a expression of political power, nothing more or less. 

The option is "pretend like it has legitimacy, and thereby let the conservatives continue to pervert it to their ends" or "recognize that the legitimacy of the SC always rested on those with power exercising restraint in how they manupulated it, and that legitimacy was destroyed by the conservative movement for its own ends, and therefore all that is left is naked political power, and act accordingly".

[Barrister]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Yes, clearly there are no other options.............

Such as?

Vote.  Fundraise.  Organize.

You know - politics.

[Berkut]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Yes, clearly there are no other options.............

Such as?

Vote.  Fundraise.  Organize.

You know - politics.

Exactly. Politics. That is what the conservatives in America have turned the USSC into - just another political institution, controlled by the minority, and a radical minority at that.

[crazy canuck]

I think you are ignoring the once important role of constitutional norms. Constitutions are not the same as rulebooks.

The constitutional norms are that these tools were used by the slavery interest, by segregationists, by anti-Progressives at the turn of the twentieth century and by anti-New Dealers. In fact I think the constitutional norm of there not being a blocking group weaponising the constitution's counter-majoritarian provisions is something that only really applies for a few decades of the twentieth century.

My point here isn't that what the GOP is doing is good or right - but that it is derived and based from the tools and institutional framework of the constitution. It is incredibly counter-majoritarian and puts a huge amount of power, if they're motivated, in the hands of minority political interests. So I think it's wrong to frame it as illegitimate or cheating because I think that gets the problem wrong - it's similar to my issue with the "defend institutions" approch. The institutions - the Senate, the Courts, the Electoral College - are what have enabled this strategy.

Similarly I think the solution is probably similar to what happened in the Progressive era and the New Deal and civil rights of using every democratic avenue you've got (as opposed to giving up on states/only viewing them through a presidential election lens which seems to have happened after Howard Dean or whatever has gone wrong with state level races since 2008), pushing them (where you can) to a more democratic approach and building/working with political movements outside of these institutions, which are counter-majoritarian, to increase the pressure on them. Cults of personality about individuals inside these institutions - whether it's Robert Mueller, James Comey or RBG - are not going to save the day; neither will yearning for a return of "normal order".

I am not sure what constitutional norms you are referring to.

[crazy canuck]

As far as legitimacy of the court goes, I'm not sure why Democrats are supposed to be concerned about damaging it.  If anything, they should be aiming to remove it.  Letting the court keep its legitimacy just gives it more power to inflict fatal damage to democracy.

And then what happens to the Rule of Law.

[Barrister]

Exactly. Politics. That is what the conservatives in America have turned the USSC into - just another political institution, controlled by the minority, and a radical minority at that.

But politics have always played a role in the courts.

The GOP has just been a lot more naked about it.

[Razgovory]

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the options "destroy the supreme court" or "give up"?

Yes, clearly there are no other options.............

Such as?

Vote.  Fundraise.  Organize.

You know - politics.

Politics in aide of what?  What should we be trying to do with political power?

[Zoupa]

Make your country better?

I don't understand your question Raz.

[Berkut]

Exactly. Politics. That is what the conservatives in America have turned the USSC into - just another political institution, controlled by the minority, and a radical minority at that.

But politics have always played a role in the courts.

The GOP has just been a lot more naked about it.

Politics has always played a role, just like democracy has always played a role, and it used to be that the law and Constitution kind of had a minor role as well.

The systems and checks and balances don't exist independent of one another, so of course "politics has always played a role". But the idea was that it would be a *secondary* role, while the primary role of the USSC was the legal and constitutional role. That is no longer the case, now it is JUST politics. The only relevance to the actual law or constitution is just what you can fig leaf pretend to care about the law or constitution.

This is what comes from the conservative war on facts, reality, science, and rational thinking that has been ongoing for decades now. This is what their "victory" looks like.

[Sheilbh]

Vote.  Fundraise.  Organize.

You know - politics.

Yes. And to be clear on the left/liberal side of this a majority of Americans support abortion rights, gay rights, campaign finance reform and gun rights. That should be the starting point not worrying about the decorum and prestige of the Supreme Court.

I find it mad that people who support those things are in a defensive crouch about this stuff and focused on the courts and law not politics.

Politics in aide of what?  What should we be trying to do with political power?

That's for people to decide, isn't it? That's what democracy is about is resolving those questions.

The systems and checks and balances don't exist independent of one another, so of course "politics has always played a role". But the idea was that it would be a *secondary* role, while the primary role of the USSC was the legal and constitutional role. That is no longer the case, now it is JUST politics. The only relevance to the actual law or constitution is just what you can fig leaf pretend to care about the law or constitution.

I think it's always been political. I don't think the courts of the 19th century with all of their horrendous constitutional rulings or any of those rulings pre-1930 which are about three pages long with minimal reasoning were about law. They've always been about politics because that's the role they've assumed. And that goes both ways for good and bad - we absolutely support the decisions of the Warren court, but let's not pretend they were politically neutral and just good law.

I think the shift is that the current court is, with the exception of Roberts, less interested in preserving its dignity rather than that they're more political. I don't think it's that the role of politics has shifted but there's more open-ness about it because, I think probably since Reagan, the hard right has realised they probably can't do what they want democratically, so they'll do it throught the courts.