The Roberts Court: A Grave Insult to the People
The three seasoned liberals (a Black, a Jew and a Latina) on the court should lead the parade on law pertaining to females. Such a major reversal should be arrived at by consensus. Roberts & Co. told them to take a walk while the six Republicans (all raised Catholic) subject women and girls to medical torture. Yes, experts consider it torture to force a girl raped by her stepfather to carry a dead fetus.
In fact, pregnant women and girls crossing state borders to seek medical care -- on the run -- reminds one of a tragic historical analogue: fugitive slaves crossing the Mason-Dixon Line to the free city of Philadelphia.
President Joe Biden should shine more public light on the captured court, which has no checks, balances nor (enforceable) ethics code. Two far-right members, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, take plush gifts and vacations from dark-money donors. And they are each married to women who openly flout their allegiance to MAGA rallies and flags.
Taney cast a dark spell of 28 years. He was nominated by Andrew Jackson and proposed by his brother-in-law, the slave-owning Maryland lawyer-poet Francis Scott Key. A zealous protector of his place on the antebellum pyramid, Key prosecuted abolitionists in the 1830s.
Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus when the war broke out. Taney stated he did not have that power, that a rebel in Baltimore could not be detained without a warrant. The new president confronted the ancient chief justice in a famous response:
"Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?"
In the moral equivalent of war, we need the president to defend ourselves.
========
The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.
----
Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
