A country that goes berserk over masks is about to debate guns and abortion.
— Windsor Mann (@WindsorMann) December 2, 2021
Because one is a Constitutional right we can erase at a whim and the other is a misinterpretation of a Constitutional provision we dare not change like we dare not touch the third rail?Why is it unthinkable to hinder the Constitutional rights of gun owners but perfectly acceptable to restrict women’s rights to bodily autonomy?
— BreviLOCAcious 💉😷🥑 (@KSfirefly24) December 2, 2021
What if we set a 15-week waiting period to obtain a gun? pic.twitter.com/3H3JAEYOvV
(A reminder: the “Bill of Rights” applies to the states because of an interpretation of the 14th Amendment as easily erased as erasing the constitutional right of Roe and Casey. There is a great deal of Constitutional law we take for granted that is as based in the Constitution as abortion. The question really is what it does to/for people, not what it does/doesn’t do to the law.)
“The law is not about people; the law is only about the law. “— COUNTRY over Party (@rcataffa) December 2, 2021
Control of females.
— Nancy R (@NRingier) December 2, 2021
This is what you get when you put law professors and lawyers with no practice background or time in trial courts on the Supreme Court. The story goes that Earl Warren oversaw the court he did because of his regret for overseeing the WWII Japanese internment camps. Many of the current Justices have never overseen anything except legal arguments.
Actual law practice makes one face the reality of how the law impacts people's lives. I meant to comment to the post about law school and learning the theory of law versus the actual practice of law. By the time I had thought it through the post was a dozen back from the most recent, so I will take this as an opportunity instead. I went to a decent state law school, in retrospect it was a good legal education focused on practice. The second and third year classes that related to my eventual area of practice, intellectual property, were all taught by practitioners, or full time professors with extensive experience of legal practice before academia. Their training let me hit the ground running as a young lawyer.
ReplyDeleteThe professor that really stands out in my memory though, was in an area of law I have never practiced, trusts and estates. We would have a class focused on some topic, how you create a will where you wrote family members out or where money was used for control. Then he would tell us why you shouldn't recommend this to your clients, and the consequences in human terms of wills or trusts with these terms. I will never forget a statement he used over and over. "When it comes to inheritances, money equals love." Any unequal distribution would leave those getting less believing they were loved less or not at all. It would set children against each other and inflame old hurts. None of this was a "legal education", but it was important to how to be a good counselor. Trusts and estates legally is the transfer of assets. Looking back now, what I was taught was that legal subject, but really the intersection of money, family relationships, and the consequences of those two under the stress of death of a person. That makes a big difference in how to approach the practice of counseling and guiding a client, and also how one would rule on matters from the bench. Legal theories and principles are convenient ways to abstract away from the real life consequences of a ruling on real people.
During yesterdays hearing, the court ignored any discussion of consequences for poor women, women of color, women without health insurance. Better the abstract principles of law and hypotheticals. The hearing was particularly disheartening because what I heard was not just coming overturning of Roe, but jockeying for the legal framework to overturn long strings of cases. Thomas and Alito called into question everything from Lochner on. Others were angling to roll back the whole line of Griswold and more. This decision will be the road map for a major reordering of national life. The six justices are not conservative any reasonable definition, they are reactionaries looking to remake the world.