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Supreme Court

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    6/8/2022

    The Supreme Court Isn't Supposed to be this Powerful

    by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan

    "Judicial supremacy is an institutional arrangement brought to cultural ascendancy by white people who wanted to undo Reconstruction and the rise of organized labor that had followed."

  • SOURCE: Politico
    6/8/2022

    What to Expect after Roe, Based on Research

    by Diana Greene Foster

    The author has systematically studied the consequences to women of having an abortion or having that freedom denied. She explains what to expect when states are free to outlaw abortion: more child poverty, more maternal death, and reduced opportunities for women, with the poor getting the worst of it.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    6/1/2022

    Why the Police Have No Duty to Protect You

    A series of Supreme Court decisions in recent decades have reinforced police officers' discretion about how and if to act, and made in nearly impossible for the public to hold the police accountable for those choices, even when lives are lost. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    5/23/2022

    Make Progressive Politics Constitutional Again

    by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath

    It is time to jettison the legal liberalism that holds constitutional interpretation separate from popular politics, or else the government's ability to legislate in the public interest will be destroyed. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/5/2022

    The Antiabortion Movement's Victory in the War of Language

    by Jennifer L. Holland

    The antiabortion movement was able to overcome American skepticism of enshrining religious views into law and demands by women for full citizenship by turning the language of rights to apply to fetuses. It remains to be seen if this language will lead to a national ban on abortion in the name of fetal personhood. 

  • SOURCE: Activist History Review
    5/4/2022

    For Deliverance: A Letter on Roe

    by Riley Clare Valentine

    A Catholic scholar and activist concludes "it is an act of love, of caritas, to reject the unjust undoing of Roe and to continue to help our neighbors who need access to abortions."

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5/3/2022

    Is Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century?

    Alito's invocation of Plessy v. Ferguson as a reason to discard precedent is galling because his opinion would destroy the kind of protection under law that Homer Plessy actually sought. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    5/5/2022

    Why the End of Roe Isn't Likely to Energize the Democrats

    by Natalie Shure

    Until the Democratic Party and its pro-choice supporters decide to take action to fix the fact that abortion restrictions are already harming poor and working-class women, they are unlikely to win elections based on their nominal support for abortion rights. 

  • SOURCE: The Constitutionalist
    3/3/2022

    Judicial Leaks, 19th Century Style

    by Mark A. Graber

    When a Justice leaked a draft of the Dred Scott decision to James Buchanan, hoping the president-elect would cajole a fellow Pennsylvanian on the court to join the opinion as a non-southern vote, it was a non-story. Today the focus should be squarely on the substance of Samuel Alito's ruling.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/3/2022

    Originalists Seriously Misconstrue the Constitution's Silences on Abortion

    by Laura Briggs

    Samuel Alito would argue that the Constitution's silence on abortion means the founders recognized no right to it. But it's more likely they understood abortion to be a common act that didn't intersect with the business of the government.