Legal/scotus thread

Krgrecw said:
And that’s the problem. How would either of those ideas help Chicago, Baltimore, NoLa? They wouldn’t. They’d have no effect on the increasing murder rates
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They wouldn't. People who use stolen guns would still use stolen guns. People who use a gun for armed robbery would still have financial incentive to pay the higher price. Mass shootings wouldn't be deterred because they would just use their credit card for their weapon and ammo without having to worry about paying it off.

The ammo part of the tax is the giveaway as to what the real goal is. How many rounds does a criminal need to shoot someone on the street or hold up a gas station. Will jacking the price up from 25 cents per round to $10 per round make any difference to them? Of course not. It just screws over hunters and other gun owners who are responsible enough to want to be proficient with their weapon.

We allow people to march in the streets for free, we allow people to broadcast for free over citizen band radio, we have public access television slots...no one ever wants to tax or charge anyone for using that stuff as part of the First Amendment . We even provide public defenders for people accused of crimes, no cost at all. But let's artificially increase the cost Jaw pays per shotgun shell, because the Second Amendment isn't really part of the Bill of Rights. We've already used the Tenth for toilet paper or no one would dream of allowing the federal government to do this. Might as well wipe with the Second too, then we can get to work on all the rest.
 
goldfly said:
Why have laws at all?
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I'm in favor of some restrictions on guns. I like waiting periods, I think there should be a capacity limit on detachable magazines, I think requiring free background checks on private purchases would be good for everyone.

What I'm not a fan of is punishing responsible gun owners, or whittling away at part of the Bill of Rights without amending it properly. None of us should want that, because if they do it with one they can do it with all the others. Next time it might be one that matters to you.
 
Well, the SCOTUS has decided to take up a major abortion case for next term. This wont lead to people going nuts at all.
 
striker42 said:
Well, the SCOTUS has decided to take up a major abortion case for next term. This wont lead to people going nuts at all.
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I’ve never understood why the liberals keep pushing the boundaries on abortion. . They should just shut up and take the win, when they had it.
 
This may only turn into more reason for people to leave the GOP.

It will be funny when they lose the midterms even with voter suppression laws in place.
 
I agree with Ginsburg in her take on Roe v Wade. It was a mistake for the court to jump in with such a massive ruling. Roe v. Wade didn't just strike down the Texas statute at issue, it created a whole new legal structure regarding abortion. Ginsburg's belief was that a more measured ruling in Roe v. Wade would have led to a cooling of tensions rather than causing them to explode. By changing laws in virtually every state overnight, the court dumped a massive amount of gas on a fire. It has become the central culture war issue of the last 30 years and has been a judicial litmus test ever since.

I hope the court doesn't make the same mistake again. A measured, approach to such issues is always better than simply blowing up the current system.
 
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Which part? Because all making abortion illegal would do is criminalize people poor and/or lazy enough to travel somewhere it's legal. Then we will get into legal crazy land where they try to restrict or charge pregnant women for leaving to get an abortion. Then they will try to criminalize anyone who helps them travel elsewhere to get an abortion.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Which part? Because all making abortion illegal would do is criminalize people poor and/or lazy enough to travel somewhere it's legal. Then we will get into legal crazy land where they try to restrict or charge pregnant women for leaving to get an abortion. Then they will try to criminalize anyone who helps them travel elsewhere to get an abortion.
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First, I don't believe you could restrict people leaving to go get an abortion. You have a fundamental right to travel. Your state can't criminalize leaving the state to go somewhere to do something that's not criminal in the place you're going. So that's out.

I'm more talking about all the stuff spewed in that meme. First, the whole "anti-choice" thing is just intentional misbranding. Those that oppose abortions don't generally oppose them because they hate women. They do it because they believe destruction of a fetus is morally wrong. It's impossible to prove or disprove the correctness of a moral stance like that. Similarly, calling someone who supports abortion as supporting murder is intentional misbranding. Those that support abortion don't support murder because they don't view a fetus as having any moral status apart from the mother. If you lead with bad labels like that, I instantly know you're not worth listening to.

Then there's this idea that politicians are against abortion simply to keep people in poverty. That's absolutely absurd. Politicians care about abortion for one of two reasons. Either they think it's morally wrong (see above) or else they oppose it because it's politically advantageous to do so. The idea that its born out of a desire to keep people in poverty doesn't even make sense. Keeping people locked in poverty being the unstated, secret goal of one of the major parties is a ridiculous stretch. We're getting to evil mustache twirling level here. It's evil for the sake of evil.

If Republicans were nefariously trying to keep poor people poor, I can't think of a more round about way of doing it than by opposing abortion.

This person completely ignores the possibility of other motivations people might have for opposing abortion or not supporting sex education or free birth control. Instead going straight to keeping people in poverty because that's the most evil motivation they could think of and assigning nefarious motivations to adversaries makes people feel better about their own positions.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

“A post-Roe United States isn’t one in which abortion isn’t legal at all,” Caitlin Knowles Myers, an economist at Middlebury College and a co-author of the research, said in our original report. She obtained and analyzed the new data for The New York Times recently. “It’s one in which there’s tremendous inequality in abortion access.”

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the word " access" the reason Roe has survived to now ?
 
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57Brave said:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

“A post-Roe United States isn’t one in which abortion isn’t legal at all,” Caitlin Knowles Myers, an economist at Middlebury College and a co-author of the research, said in our original report. She obtained and analyzed the new data for The New York Times recently. “It’s one in which there’s tremendous inequality in abortion access.”

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the word " access" the reason Roe has survived to now ?
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No, Roe (or Casey) has survived based on the original holding and not having enough justices to overturn it. Access is a common battleground. States know they can't criminalize abortion so they've instead attempted to regulate access. The SCOTUS has been more willing to take up those cases and leave such regulations in place than they have been to overturn Roe/Casey.

If the SCOTUS did overturn Roe/Casey, then abortion doesn't automatically become illegal in the US. It just allows the states to regulate it. Many states still have abortion criminal statutes on the books so in those states it would immediately become illegal. Other states have laws ensuring access to abortions. In those states it would remain legal. So the access would be determined by what state you live in and whether you have the ability to travel to a state where it's legal to get one.

The whole argument annoys me. Disparity in access isn't a reason to support abortion. It all goes back to one issue, what moral obligations are owed to a fetus? If you could prove objectively that a fetus has the same rights and is owed the same moral obligations as any other person, then abortion is clearly wrong. Arguing disparity of access would be like arguing disparity of access to murder. However, if you could prove objectively that a fetus had no rights and was owed no moral obligations, then disparity of access is a terrible argument. The argument against it is that you're imposing upon a woman's rights with no real justification.

No one wants to argue the base question though because they'd have to admit there's no objective right answer. They just want to assume they're correct and then argue all the other horribles.
 
striker42 said:
No, Roe (or Casey) has survived based on the original holding and not having enough justices to overturn it. Access is a common battleground. States know they can't criminalize abortion so they've instead attempted to regulate access. The SCOTUS has been more willing to take up those cases and leave such regulations in place than they have been to overturn Roe/Casey.

If the SCOTUS did overturn Roe/Casey, then abortion doesn't automatically become illegal in the US. It just allows the states to regulate it. Many states still have abortion criminal statutes on the books so in those states it would immediately become illegal. Other states have laws ensuring access to abortions. In those states it would remain legal. So the access would be determined by what state you live in and whether you have the ability to travel to a state where it's legal to get one.

The whole argument annoys me. Disparity in access isn't a reason to support abortion. It all goes back to one issue, what moral obligations are owed to a fetus? If you could prove objectively that a fetus has the same rights and is owed the same moral obligations as any other person, then abortion is clearly wrong. Arguing disparity of access would be like arguing disparity of access to murder. However, if you could prove objectively that a fetus had no rights and was owed no moral obligations, then disparity of access is a terrible argument. The argument against it is that you're imposing upon a woman's rights with no real justification.

No one wants to argue the base question though because they'd have to admit there's no objective right answer. They just want to assume they're correct and then argue all the other horribles.
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remind me which amendment is argued - this violates ?

I think even Justice Thomas made this point
 
57Brave said:
remind me which amendment is argued - this violates ?

I think even Justice Thomas made this point
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Access to many things varies by state. Take marijuana for example. In some state's it's illegal and in others it's legal. Access varies based on where you are and whether you have the ability to travel to get it. Same goes to gambling, assisted suicide, etc.
 
Really interesting decision handed down this morning in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. A Catholic charity had a contract with the city to provide foster care for children. The charity wont certify same sex couples as foster parents and this violated the city's rules so the city tried to terminate the contract. It goes up to the SCOTUS with all 9 justices deciding that a free exercise violation occurs. Here's where it gets interesting.

Roberts wrote the opinion with Barrett, Kavanaugh, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joining his opinion. The other three agreed with the outcome (the city violated the first amendment) but disagreed with the reasoning. This could be a big signal of how the court will end up balancing itself and why the dire predictions of a far right court could be way off.

The court could have gone further on this case and laid down some strong restrictions on what the government can do in relation to its dealings with religion. The case was an opportunity to greatly expand free exercise doctrine and could have struck against public accommodation law as applied to religious groups. Instead the court made a very narrow, fact specific ruling dealing with unique aspects of the city's rules.

Looking at the narrow ruling in the context of the majority, I think you're seeing an alliance between the left wing of the court and the more moderate conservatives. I think there's a good chance that Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan would have sided with the city if they had their way but that would likely have meant the decision going much farther right as the right wing of the court would have had a much bigger voice in the opinion. Instead, the liberal justices joined with the moderates to create a very narrow opinion that largely maintained the status quo.

I think this is something you might see happen more in the future.
 
It seems like Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor are in constant lockstep agreement. Am I imagining that? Is there some of way seeing if any other three justices have voted together as often as those three (or 4 when RBG was there) over the past few years?
 
And I agree with the minority that all this narrow ruling does is kick the can down the road a few feet. Philly will eliminate their right to provide exemptions in a few weeks and then start this all over again.
 
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