I'm gonna stick my foot in it on Roe v. Wade
It's a little bit late but also early, as, hopefully, it never happens. I'm also a man, not a female so this is more a law/politics discussion than a feminism one. Being a male it's not my space to get yelled at for weighing in. So you might ask why I'd raise this... But it's much more than that.
I will repeat, for what it's worth not from a feminist perspective (and not because I don’t want to be yelled at) but from a straight forward legal/political position (as someone who is a student of both schools of academics currently law school, previously the school of political science/international relations).
It’s an important issue for lawyers and women alike because from a law perspective it's not just about WOMEN, what it does to the narrative of judicial advocacy... If the changes happen are quite scary.
It has raised all of the bad problems of Trump. Not only did he appoint conservatives to the judiciary. He appointed young conservatives, and with life appointments in order to fix the balance of the courts again, it sets the dangerous precedent that we will be waiting for the deaths of justices Thomas, and Alito, before the balance is fairly set again.
We could be looking at another 30 to 50 years before we get another chance to equally balance the bench in the United States while maintaining the precedent of having nine justices on the bench. That is, unless Biden wants to try to follow precedent and make hostile appointments.Then there is the other issue.
The only type of hostile appointments Biden could make are ones that would stack the bench by appointing hostile judges, which would in turn make the courts even more political than what Trump made it. This whole fucking thing stinks... like the bottom of a toilet bowl.
As someone who has a solidly academic interest in politics and law. While there is no technical limit to the amount of judges that can be appointed even that in itself continues a dangerous precedent in politics. That is, if Biden were to appoint even more judges to the bench. While congress sets no limit to the amount of judges, appointing more liberal (left) leaning judges would create hostility in and of itself. There has been as little 6 judges at one point. Currently the norm is 9
To upset the balance shows there is no fair way to win, and it follows a precedent of intellectual dishonesty, and removing power from vulnerable, minority and women's groups.
There is no other way of removing judges either after appointment, other than resignation or impeachment, and you have to account for what grounds you want to impeach them and certainly grounds of differences of opinion is not grounds enough for impeachment. While (obviously) the courts are a form of government, the judicial arm (as a government) was never meant to be hostile or intellectually dishonest. It just became that way.
Lawyers set out to be esquires (bearers of both shields and swords) the law, however, has became intellectually dishonest, and in reality it started some time shortly after Ancient Greek democracy... sometime shortly after its inception.... I guess I can blame myself for being Greek and being part of the "blood pollution" that created politics and the law as we know it...
Further to that, there is the additional problem with scuttling Roe v. Wade:
That is that it gives lawyers a sword (abortion is bad) but in very many cases no shield (women's bodies and personal choices AS women need to be protected, women's bodies are not equivalent to factories for productive labor). I don't know how many times I have to say that to Christian incels who won't find a modern women who will put up with their shit over bodily autonomy.
Moreover, it also sets a dangerous precedent on the still ongoing debate over Furman v. Georgia if the conservatives decided to get up a law mandating the death penalty across America and so on.
It's an intellectually dishonest nightmare, and this is what the world gets for promoting Donald Trump as a "harmless meme" or in the more correct sense... A harmless form of "cultural evolution" (which is what a meme is) that has set a dangerous bar for the conservative right across the world. And we can discuss memetics as a form of cultural evolution because it's observable in the form of what the conservative right has become around the world.
Donald Trump wasn't just a harmless meme, he's set an arguably, very bad normative, cultural, precedent around the world. I actually fucking hate making this argument but people need to hear it and while it starts out in America, it bleeds out into the rest of the world through meme politics of the far right.
This in itself is reason enough to think more carefully about who and what you want in this world to govern you.If you want to be ruled by our intellectually dishonest right wing brothers… actually… more power to you… but if you’re throwing votes at meme candidates in order to protest that “the law and politics is crap…” I don’t blame you…
I once thought like that also… and then I woke up and decided to be the voice for the types of things I wanted to see in this world… We aren’t all going to see eye to eye… but there is a point on not wasting your votes on meme candidates that hurt all of us equally.
In no way does this represent legal or political advice. Just my personal point of view in my private life as a private citizen. Do with it what you want.
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Posted May 20, 2022, 8:31 AM UTC