Catholic Court
The 5-4 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Federal ban on so-called partial birth abortions, imposing the Court majority’s medical opinion in place of the medical opinion of the mother’s doctor, and in spite of numerous District and Circuit Court rulings and prior Supreme Court precedents to the contrary, has an interesting religious overtone. The five Justices who voted for the ban are all Catholics: Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. The two Jews, Ginsburg and Breyer, and the two Protestants, Souter and Stevens, were outvoted.
As this page from Adherents.com shows, Catholics and Jews are over represented on the Court compared to their portion of the U.S. population, while Protestants are under represented. This decision shows religious beliefs of Justices inform their decisions, just as political ideology played a central role in the Court giving the Presidency to George Bush in 2000.
posted by Tom Blake | 9:31 AM
3 Comments:
What a surprise that the justices' religious beliefs informed their opinions. I think their political beliefs were even a greater influence. After all, the appointments going at least as far back as Thomas were preparing for the overturnning of Roe vs Wade. Now it has started. It would take a very thick skin for a recent Republican appointee to vote for abortion.
More generally, what should inform the justices' opinion in an abortion case such as this? Is the Constitution so clear on this topic: that a woman does or does not have the right to abort the life of the fetus? Are there other documents or precedents that the justices should be reviewing rather than what their conscience and their standing in their chosen community tells them? Or are the justices really just making law no matter how they vote?
My own thoughts on this are muddled. I believe life is sacred. I also believe that a lot of juvenile and adult crime has been reduced partly as a result of Roe vs Wade.
The right of a woman to control her own body vs the right of a fetus to live is a difficult choice. One that I have made, but I don't feel on firm ground because it just seems too personal.
John from Phoenix
Supreme Court Rulings should be based on the principle of stare decisis and the application of the rule of law. In the abortion area, Roe is the watershed case, which has been acknowledged and followed through the years. The only woman on the Court, Justice Ginsburg, wrote a dissent in the present case showing that Congress was acting in bad faith in passing the so-called “partial birth abortion” ban, and that the majority of the Court is playing along to, as you say, start the pendulum swinging back in the direction of overturning Roe. All the opinions in this case can be read at this location.
My Latin is too old so I looked "stare decisis" on Wikipedia. It means stand by decisions and don't move that which is quiet. Or "let sleeping dogs lie".
That seems to beg my question. What if later courts feel that a previous Court decision is erroneous? On what grounds can members of the new court argue that the old court was wrong? Wouldn't most people today feel that the Dred Scott decision was erroneous and politically motivated? What arguments would a newer court make? I guess my question was made moot by the 14th amendment, but you get my point.
Roe v Wade has never been a sleeping dog. Hasn't it been praised and denigrated more than any other Supreme Court decision, at least in our lifetime?
John from Phoenix
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