Friday, June 26, 2015
The only thing that tempers my satisfaction-- just a little bit-- with the Supreme Court's rulings over the past few days-- marriage equality, fair housing, ACA, the stupid Daughters of the Confederacy thing-- is none of these should have been all that hard. I keep saying that it's where people end up that's important, and I believe that, but it should have to be so hard to get them to the right place.
The ACA decision was interesting because even though Roberts took the decision for himself, he didn't do that thing he does where he tries to make the outcome as narrow and specific as possible. As soon as I read that he wasn't going to base his reasoning on Chevron deference I knew that this one was easy for him, and why not? Guys that go to Harvard are supposed to understand statutory construction. I have a feeling that he wrote his Obergefell dissent more as a way to reassure his conservative pals that he is still on board with them than out of any particularly strongly held legal opinion, and for what it's worth he gets his social anthropology wrong. "[A] social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs" For real? What of all of the societies that were and are polygamous? If your argument is based on tradition than what that necessarily means is that you are cherry-picking the traditions you are choosing to respect. That's not how Equal Protection works, Your Honor. Thomas' dissent, on the other hand,is simply nuts-- I'm hard pressed to think of a more hateful Supreme Court justice ever."[H]uman dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved.Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignitybecause the government confined them." You really think that?
The ACA decision was interesting because even though Roberts took the decision for himself, he didn't do that thing he does where he tries to make the outcome as narrow and specific as possible. As soon as I read that he wasn't going to base his reasoning on Chevron deference I knew that this one was easy for him, and why not? Guys that go to Harvard are supposed to understand statutory construction. I have a feeling that he wrote his Obergefell dissent more as a way to reassure his conservative pals that he is still on board with them than out of any particularly strongly held legal opinion, and for what it's worth he gets his social anthropology wrong. "[A] social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs" For real? What of all of the societies that were and are polygamous? If your argument is based on tradition than what that necessarily means is that you are cherry-picking the traditions you are choosing to respect. That's not how Equal Protection works, Your Honor. Thomas' dissent, on the other hand,is simply nuts-- I'm hard pressed to think of a more hateful Supreme Court justice ever."[H]uman dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved.Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignitybecause the government confined them." You really think that?
// posted by Bill @ 1:14 PM 
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