As for Hendu Hammer's comment, and mention of abortion, all three of the clown's nominees were asked directly and specifically about Roe, and all of them responded in Senate testimony that it was "settled law." Then, they overturned it. And it's unclear what can be done.
I loved your piece generally. For many conservatives this Supreme Court is just bringing the Court back to its rightful place from all those years of a liberal court, starting with the Warren Court, to a neutral place. For decades the Court and the Executive filled-in for the Congress's inability to get things done. With Trump it has reached an extreme. I have a short piece explaining a more moderate opinion of this court.
The Dobbs decision overturning Roe is a good example of this court seeing its constitutional role as not making policy, just deciding constitutional questions. In Dobbs the Court decided that it did not have the authority to decide on abortion, since that would be a policy decision and the constitution does not mention "abortion". Under the 10the Amendment it could have held that the "people" have the authority to decide this but it gave that authority to the state legislatures. I think that was wrong. hasselhilljr@gmail.com 720 315 2808 Aurora, Colorado
“Without structural constraints on what any court can do, any reform will just be a band-aid”, yet band-aids certainly do have their uses.
This reminds me of my frustration over Biden’s, at least seemingly, inaction on the problematic 6th January and other rather fundamental attacks on reasonable governance.
At one side is it the hunt on the “perfect” solution, meaning a solution that doesn’t exist and will forever solve a specific problem or dilemma. On the other side is it inactivity that encourages more of the same.
I am not saying *I* know the solutions to everything, but in the case of Biden’s tenure, was it not lack of warnings or lack of perspectives on the consequences of Republican hooliganism and use of inconsistent moral and ethical arguments, yet solutions were not prepared or presented.
I like how the article breaks down the 9 ways the court contributes to backsliding.
Sort of confused on what exactly what we mean by "democracy." The abortion decision, which is one of the most consequential decisions during the Roberts court, was extremely pro-democratic as it transferred power to the people and the States on the issue of abortion. I've always viewed "democracy" as "power to the people."
If giving over decisions to states is more democratic, why not devolve such decision-making power to counties or cities? That would be even more democratic, right? Or…get this…why not devolve the decision-making power to the individual in the case of abortion? What could possibly be more democratic than that?
If we lived in a country called "United America," you would be correct. But we don't.
If rights of individual behavior aren't enshrined in the federal constitution (or federal law), we go to the state level and let democracy do its thing.
So it’s fine for states to legislate away private decisions? Why don’t they decide to be more democratic and allow each county or city/ town to decide? That would be WAY more democratic.
Just a hint here: letting states make more decisions about what we can’t do isn’t “more democratic.” Anyone arguing this is either disingenuous or stupid.
I'm not arguing that democracy is good or bad or whether states should legislate private decisions. I'm arguing this is the system we have, whether we like it or not.
States do legislate some private decisions. use of weed, school choice, obviously abortion like we discussed.
Some States (depending on the state constitution) do allow city/town/counties to have more power, we saw this during COVID where some localities where able to lockdown without State approval. We see this with land use laws.
I'm arguing that for abortion specifically, the outcome was more democratic than before because now people could have decide on a State level what they wanted to do.
Therefore, when these authors say the Supreme Court is anti-democratic, I'm wondering what does that mean if one of the most important decisions was pro-democratic.
Where do we disagree? What's your definition of democracy?
Giving the abortion decision to states rather than individuals is not more democratic. It’s allowing states to restrict the choices citizens make. One of the most important functions of the federal government laid out in our Constitution is to protect individual liberty. Throughout our history, “states’ rights” has never meant more liberty.
Democracy is government where the people consent to be governed, usually by representatives they elect, bound by a set of fundamental principles and laws contained in a constitution. Since no one and no thing is perfect, the principles and laws in the constitution to which the people consented are the final say, the so-called “rule of law.” The Ninth Amendment is a clear expression of the fallibility of everyone and every law. If the right to choose what happens within the confines of your own skin isn’t included under the Ninth Amendment, I’m not sure anything is.
Giving abortion decisions to individuals is constitutional (rights to people that cannot be over tuned by democracy), but not democratic.
“Constitution is designed to protect individual liberty” – Absolutely, but that is not democracy. That’s constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is relatively “anti-democratic” because it protects our liberties against the forces of democracy. Democracy does not concern itself with individual rights, it is a system of giving “power to the people.” You elect people in office, and they manage society. It is prone to tyranny of the majority but can also impact change in society quickly. There is good and bad to democracy.
“Democracy is government where the people consent to be governed, usually by representatives they elect, bound by a set of fundamental principles and laws contained in a constitution.” I would argue that it is “American constitutional democracy,” for which our system is a complicated combination of constitutionalism at the federal level and democracies at the local level. We could agree that our system is a form of democracy, but because the constitution (anti-democratic) plays such an important part, I think the label “democracy’ is misleading.
I’m not trying to be difficult. My original point in the post is that we no longer have a true definition of democracy anymore and the authors of the article were throwing around the term loosely. It seems to be used in the context of the first person: “Anything I like out of government is considered democracy, anything I don’t like is authoritarian or democratic back-sliding.” That is not how democracy works.
Without having an understanding of what we are talking about, it becomes more difficult to communicate and build effective coalitions.
This is a very interesting conversation and not as simple as we could wish.
Example: The Industrial Revolution changed the world dramatically and it did make lives easier (of sorts). However, it did take a long fight for the technical solutions and the changed job-market to benefit the workers and not only the owners.
Britain was proudly extremely capitalistic and the laws wasn’t very consumer, nor worker friendly. Then local city councils started making their own ways to help, eventually rules that helped make quality of life and even survival more predictable. Manchester is considered an important location for this process that changed Europe and at least the western world. Soon other councils adopted similar policies. As soon as the population could see the benefits and health of these changes did those living in areas without political remedies to the drive of exploiting workers and citizens in general, get uppity enough to demand similar protections.
That is when London made nationwide policies to protect everyone.
Counter-example (of sorts): In modern Britain and typically under the Conservatives, has it been a focus on lowering taxes, lean government and the idea of the market solving things that politicians didn’t want, or dared, to solve. The way this has been done is, among other things, to deprive the city councils of income (tax et cetera) to leave the responsibility more to the local councils, but still keep the regulations.
So one had to break; either the economy, or the regulations in place to keep the population healthy and, ironically, productive. As a result was it before Brexit (when UK left the EU) in UK that the majority of the 10 poorest communities of EU was located.
So deregulation of local democracy and regulation of democracy can both be used for and against public good.
This is a shockingly demoralizing post.
As for Hendu Hammer's comment, and mention of abortion, all three of the clown's nominees were asked directly and specifically about Roe, and all of them responded in Senate testimony that it was "settled law." Then, they overturned it. And it's unclear what can be done.
I loved your piece generally. For many conservatives this Supreme Court is just bringing the Court back to its rightful place from all those years of a liberal court, starting with the Warren Court, to a neutral place. For decades the Court and the Executive filled-in for the Congress's inability to get things done. With Trump it has reached an extreme. I have a short piece explaining a more moderate opinion of this court.
The Dobbs decision overturning Roe is a good example of this court seeing its constitutional role as not making policy, just deciding constitutional questions. In Dobbs the Court decided that it did not have the authority to decide on abortion, since that would be a policy decision and the constitution does not mention "abortion". Under the 10the Amendment it could have held that the "people" have the authority to decide this but it gave that authority to the state legislatures. I think that was wrong. hasselhilljr@gmail.com 720 315 2808 Aurora, Colorado
“Without structural constraints on what any court can do, any reform will just be a band-aid”, yet band-aids certainly do have their uses.
This reminds me of my frustration over Biden’s, at least seemingly, inaction on the problematic 6th January and other rather fundamental attacks on reasonable governance.
At one side is it the hunt on the “perfect” solution, meaning a solution that doesn’t exist and will forever solve a specific problem or dilemma. On the other side is it inactivity that encourages more of the same.
I am not saying *I* know the solutions to everything, but in the case of Biden’s tenure, was it not lack of warnings or lack of perspectives on the consequences of Republican hooliganism and use of inconsistent moral and ethical arguments, yet solutions were not prepared or presented.
Yes. Let's do all these things.
I like how the article breaks down the 9 ways the court contributes to backsliding.
Sort of confused on what exactly what we mean by "democracy." The abortion decision, which is one of the most consequential decisions during the Roberts court, was extremely pro-democratic as it transferred power to the people and the States on the issue of abortion. I've always viewed "democracy" as "power to the people."
How do the authors define democracy?
If giving over decisions to states is more democratic, why not devolve such decision-making power to counties or cities? That would be even more democratic, right? Or…get this…why not devolve the decision-making power to the individual in the case of abortion? What could possibly be more democratic than that?
If we lived in a country called "United America," you would be correct. But we don't.
If rights of individual behavior aren't enshrined in the federal constitution (or federal law), we go to the state level and let democracy do its thing.
So it’s fine for states to legislate away private decisions? Why don’t they decide to be more democratic and allow each county or city/ town to decide? That would be WAY more democratic.
Just a hint here: letting states make more decisions about what we can’t do isn’t “more democratic.” Anyone arguing this is either disingenuous or stupid.
I'm not arguing that democracy is good or bad or whether states should legislate private decisions. I'm arguing this is the system we have, whether we like it or not.
States do legislate some private decisions. use of weed, school choice, obviously abortion like we discussed.
Some States (depending on the state constitution) do allow city/town/counties to have more power, we saw this during COVID where some localities where able to lockdown without State approval. We see this with land use laws.
I'm arguing that for abortion specifically, the outcome was more democratic than before because now people could have decide on a State level what they wanted to do.
Therefore, when these authors say the Supreme Court is anti-democratic, I'm wondering what does that mean if one of the most important decisions was pro-democratic.
Where do we disagree? What's your definition of democracy?
Giving the abortion decision to states rather than individuals is not more democratic. It’s allowing states to restrict the choices citizens make. One of the most important functions of the federal government laid out in our Constitution is to protect individual liberty. Throughout our history, “states’ rights” has never meant more liberty.
Democracy is government where the people consent to be governed, usually by representatives they elect, bound by a set of fundamental principles and laws contained in a constitution. Since no one and no thing is perfect, the principles and laws in the constitution to which the people consented are the final say, the so-called “rule of law.” The Ninth Amendment is a clear expression of the fallibility of everyone and every law. If the right to choose what happens within the confines of your own skin isn’t included under the Ninth Amendment, I’m not sure anything is.
Giving abortion decisions to individuals is constitutional (rights to people that cannot be over tuned by democracy), but not democratic.
“Constitution is designed to protect individual liberty” – Absolutely, but that is not democracy. That’s constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is relatively “anti-democratic” because it protects our liberties against the forces of democracy. Democracy does not concern itself with individual rights, it is a system of giving “power to the people.” You elect people in office, and they manage society. It is prone to tyranny of the majority but can also impact change in society quickly. There is good and bad to democracy.
“Democracy is government where the people consent to be governed, usually by representatives they elect, bound by a set of fundamental principles and laws contained in a constitution.” I would argue that it is “American constitutional democracy,” for which our system is a complicated combination of constitutionalism at the federal level and democracies at the local level. We could agree that our system is a form of democracy, but because the constitution (anti-democratic) plays such an important part, I think the label “democracy’ is misleading.
I’m not trying to be difficult. My original point in the post is that we no longer have a true definition of democracy anymore and the authors of the article were throwing around the term loosely. It seems to be used in the context of the first person: “Anything I like out of government is considered democracy, anything I don’t like is authoritarian or democratic back-sliding.” That is not how democracy works.
Without having an understanding of what we are talking about, it becomes more difficult to communicate and build effective coalitions.
This is a very interesting conversation and not as simple as we could wish.
Example: The Industrial Revolution changed the world dramatically and it did make lives easier (of sorts). However, it did take a long fight for the technical solutions and the changed job-market to benefit the workers and not only the owners.
Britain was proudly extremely capitalistic and the laws wasn’t very consumer, nor worker friendly. Then local city councils started making their own ways to help, eventually rules that helped make quality of life and even survival more predictable. Manchester is considered an important location for this process that changed Europe and at least the western world. Soon other councils adopted similar policies. As soon as the population could see the benefits and health of these changes did those living in areas without political remedies to the drive of exploiting workers and citizens in general, get uppity enough to demand similar protections.
That is when London made nationwide policies to protect everyone.
Counter-example (of sorts): In modern Britain and typically under the Conservatives, has it been a focus on lowering taxes, lean government and the idea of the market solving things that politicians didn’t want, or dared, to solve. The way this has been done is, among other things, to deprive the city councils of income (tax et cetera) to leave the responsibility more to the local councils, but still keep the regulations.
So one had to break; either the economy, or the regulations in place to keep the population healthy and, ironically, productive. As a result was it before Brexit (when UK left the EU) in UK that the majority of the 10 poorest communities of EU was located.
So deregulation of local democracy and regulation of democracy can both be used for and against public good.