The 13th Amendment outlawing slavery was passed by Congress on Jan. 31, 1865. No Confederate state voted as they had no representatives in Congress. It was only ratified in Dec. 1865 after the war ended the preceding April because its ratification was a requirement for the ex-Confederate states to get representation in Congress again. Otherwise, it never would have passed ratification.

Yes. As in desegregation; Brown vs. Board of Education.

Possible actions by Congress continued, a link within the link in my above post:
538

Again the article is much longer and includes the historical details where these actions actually were taken by Congress to rein in the SCOTUS.

'Fun' fact; Facebook has marked that picture as threatening violence and not in line with their community standards. People are being suspended and banned for posting it.

Actual threats by right wingers don't count, but pro-Roe signs get marked down in a day.

Seriously that was written by a law-school prof who claims that Congress can suspend the Supreme Court. Sounds more like Dick the Butcher.

Can Congress strip a co-equal branch of government of its powers? Isn't that contradictory. But the argument that Congress can is based on Article III of the Constitution which states: “The Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

Below is a quote from a blog published in 2020 by legal firm Rasmussen Dickey Moore, published as Amy Comey Barrett was being sworn in.


I guess there were lawyers who saw this coming. :(

It's because the right-wingers report posts en masse. They have flooded the internet with their trolling POV.

And another link commented on by someone who clearly didn't read it.

There are examples of these actions that were actually put in place by Congress in my links.

The thing is, who is going to enforce the SCOTUS decisions if the Congress passed legislation overriding them? And that needs to start right now with federal legislation codifying the right to choose.

In the past some Southern states tried to ignore civil rights legislation to desegregate schools and the federal government sent in troops to enforce the legislation. If the Democrats retain control of the Congress and the Presidency, who is going to stop them protecting abortion rights in states that want to ban abortions?

It means we need to show overwhelming strength this Nov. If we keep letting the minority rule, even after this, then we are in big trouble because this Christian theocracy is not going to stop at banning abortions.

After the recent ruling you still trust the SC more than the states? :jaw-dropp

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post
That does not change history nor the fact that yes, some states are that untrustworthy.
Several SC cases have dealt with states and redistricting around race. Guess which states were the most egregious? Hint: they weren't on the West Coast or in New England.

Shaw v. Reno, (1993) North Carolina
Miller v. Johnson, (1995) Georgia
Cooper v. Harris, (2017) North Carolina

Shhh! Considering the current make up of the SC, they might decide to revisit those cases again.

I'm curious. Had the Dems moved to make it a law rather than relying on it being Constitutional, what makes you think that the Reps wouldn't have overturned such a law the minute they gained power? At least with abortion being a settled, constitutional right (wink wink, right Kavenaugh?) it wasn't going to just become illegal every 2-4 years when Congress changed hands.

Yeah, I’d rather not depend on Republican incompetence and stray dissenting votes to keep that in place. Look at how the ACA barely survived 2016-2018.

True enough, but remember "barely survived" is a form of survival. I do believe it's not unreasonable for the D. party to have presumed that Roe V Wade had made a law unnecessary, and for them to have decided not to open the legislative can of worms, but it seems to be harder to eliminate a law than to pass it, so I kind of wish they had tried.

Well, maybe that used to be true.

True, it's not always so, and there are no guarantees, but I think that the longer a law exists, and is found livable, the harder it is to persuade people to get rid of it, so I would have been happier if the principle of Roe V. Wade had been legislated and been around for a while.

Hindsight.

Desperate efforts not to deal with recent events.

Ore importantly, even if the Democrats had codified abortion protection at the federal level, why would anyone expect that to he supreme Court would have allowed the law to stand? The same justices that relied on an expert who believed in witchcraft would likely find some way to strike down federal protections for abortion.

Sent from my moto e using Tapatalk

That's possible, but they would have to find some Constitutional basis to do so. And since they've already determined that the Constitution doesn't say anything about abortion, that might be hard.

Several decisions over the last few weeks make it clear they have no intention of following any kind of Constitutionally based consistency in their rulings.

Isn't it at least notionally the other way around? The law would need to have some basis in the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. Now, there has been at least 60 years where the court has allowed the powers of Congress to expand into territories previously thought reserved to the States, but there is nothing absolutely preventing that trend being reversed.

Yes, it's hindsight. Like the people now criticized by some for inaction, I did not think it necessary before. And yes, it should never have become an issue.

Probably. Eight wingers will do everything in their power to undermine basic human rights and freedom, and of course the right wing peanut gallery will cheer the whole way.

You are talking about hardcore idealogues on the supreme court. They can come up with an excuse that is paper thin and totally defies rational thinking, and there is nothing that can be done to reverse their decision. They can do pretty much anything they want. When you have hundreds of years of supreme court rulings, not to mention centuries of civil law, dozens of documents written by founding fathers, etc. you can find SOMETHING to support your ruling, even if 99% of other sources say the complete opposite.

As I pointed out before... Alito actually referred to Matthew Hale (who prosecuted people for WITCHRAFT) when he wrote the abortion decision. If that's not a sign that "all sense of logic is gone" then I don't know what is.

The seven judges who gave us Roe v. Wade read miles between the lines of the Constitution to find a non-existent federal abortion right. Justice Marshall admitted years later that Roe was made up of "whole cloth." They ignored all precedent, and also ignored the fact that when the Constitution was ratified, several states had laws against abortion and not a single founding father expressed any concern about those laws.

Thanks to a sane Supreme Court, the issue of abortion is now back where it was intended to be handled, and where it should have been left in 1973: with the states.

Just trolling at this point.

[emoji208] GOP doesn't seem to agree.

https://www.axios.com/2022/06/24/gop...rictions-dobbs

:confused:

Do you think I'm criticizing people for inaction?

Nope. I'm pointing out that there are things people can do who claim there is nothing they can do (presumably because they are in blue states or districts).

And it doesn't require more than they are doing right now, amplifying their sentiments on social media.

My point is to counter the pessimism and it's not magical thinking.

REgarding criticism I was not referring to you. Others have indeed criticized the Democrats for not following up on Roe V. Wade with legislation. I think many thought (and it should have been true) that the right was affirmed, especially after 50 years. To note that we might have acted differently if we'd only known what reactionary insanity would come to power is not to misidentify the villains.

I have been hearing a good bit about how this recent judgment, an overall minority position, is motivating people to vote and take action. I am resolved to stay at least slightly optimistic in the hope that this is true, and that this whole thing ends up biting the reactionary trend in the ass. I am not convinced that it will, but we can hope.

Re the impact of this Christian fundy decision on Nov election: NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll: The Overturning of Roe v. Wade, June 2022
Majority Opposes Overturning Roe v. Wade... More than Six in Ten Say Decision Will Push Them to the Polls in November CBS News poll: Americans react to overturning of Roe v. Wade

Not a single Founding Father expressed any concern about the laws in the states denying women the right to vote or the fact that married women lost their legal identify, could not control their own money, own property, or sign legal documents. But, what the hell, right?

If there's one thing that I've learned in my life, it's that political polls are ********. I'll believe it if it comes true when the votes are counted.

I can't find who said it now but it has been pointed out that taking an "originalist" view of the constitution means taking into account only the views of white male slave owners and disenfranchising the rest.

What votes? Election polls are snapshots in time. Candidates can gain or lose support in days. But polls about political and social beliefs tend to be reliable and consistent. Someone who supported Roe v. Wade last week or last month or 30 years ago is not likely to change his mind overnight. And numerous polls over years and decades indicate that a substantial majority of Americans want abortion to be legal and available on the terms, more or less, than Roe provides. If the issue was presented in a national referendum, legal abortion would win.

Seems to be quite the theme here, this is no different than anything else we libruls said would matter.

:popcorn1

The Republicans have plenty of time to make the hot topic something else by November. They'll get their base fired up about drag queens, or CRT, or some other ******** issue. They're one-issue voters, but that doesn't mean the one issue can't change. They're serial monogamists, in love with the latest "threat to America" of the moment.

This sounded familiar, so I did some checking

I think was Jeffrey Toobin, an American lawyer, author, political commentator and legal analyst for CNN

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...oking-backward

Toobin was talking about SC Justice Antonin Scalia a short time after his death - he said "But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century."

You can tell Toobin had little, if any respect for Scalia..... "Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy."

Difficult to argue with his point of view, and difficult to argue that this current SCOTUS seems hell-bent on continuing Scalia's work!

To be fair, it is hard to take Toobin seriously, and especially the matter of whether he has respect for others. I disregard his opinion on Scalia.

for the current SC, Scalia was a left-wing extremist who hated Christianity.