“The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and the Monument Quilt Project will walk in support of safety for Native women and sovereignty of Indian nations,” said Cherrah Giles, Board President, NIWRC. “We ask everyone to join our effort to oppose Dollar General. Non-Indian corporations and sex predators must be held accountable. Race should not be a license to prey on Native women and children.”
Republicans in the Senate are not even pretending to give a shit about the sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh. They do not care about women. They care about nothing but the acquisition of power.
Ginni Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. She has been in the news lately, for sending many deranged text messages to Mark Meadows supporting conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. She was present at the ½/21 insurrection.
It has long been known that Ms. Thomas has been paid by right-wing groups with cases before the court, creating an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. In 2017-18, her lobbying firm was paid over $200,000 by the Center for Security Policy.
On January 19, 2022, Thomas was the only justice to vote against letting the National Archives give the House Select Committee investigating January 6 hundreds of pages of documents from T*ump’s time infesting the White House. Quid pro quo?
how does SCOTUS type out there needs to be an “increase the domestic supply of infants” and at no point among several different people does anyone say, “Ya know…. this is weird af. We’re weird af for this.”
so it’s safe to say we’ve reached the “infants are part of the supply chain” stage of capitalism…
I’m not at all surprised about Roe vs Wade tbh. Anyone who’s been following the situation surrounding trans and queer issues, especially the legalization of trans bodies, knew this was coming.
They built momentum, and they used it to sledgehammer all over reproductive rights, trans rights, and above all, poor people’s rights (bc let’s be honest, rich ppl will always be able to get the healthcare they need and that includes abortions etc).
too little people revolted so it felt like the time has come…All oppression is connected…
Senate Republicans have declared their intention to block the confirmation of ANY Supreme Court nominee by President Obama. This is a truly radical refusal to fulfill the Senate’s constitutional obligation to vote on Supreme Court nominee confirmations. The American people deserve better.
Protests are ongoing outside the homes of Brett Kavanaugh and the conservative Supreme Court Justices.
them mfs just described democracy like it’s unfair
“We won’t be bullied into following the will of the people we’re supposed to serve” -conservatives
So here’s the thing: the Supreme Court really *ISN’T* supposed to be a political entity in the same way that the legislative and executive branches are. The whole point was to have a system of checks and balances to ensure that there wasn’t a “tyranny of the majority” situation in government where a persecuted minority could be oppressed by the voting masses. A Supreme Court that is untouchable by electoralism means, in theory, that they will be able to interpret the law in peace, apart from the politics de jour.
The problem is, this only works if the appointment procedure works and if the justices are honest. Neither is currently true.
Republicans have managed to not only game the system for appointing justices, these justices directly LIED about their stances during their confirmation hearings, saying Roe was settled law even if they disliked it.
So yeah. Hopefully we can bully them or find a way to unseat them, but this is what he’s referencing here. In theory, he’s correct, but he is directly part of the group responsible for breaking down this particular framework in reality, and so it’s real rich that he’s crying crocodile tears about it now.
oh my GOD thank you so much for saying this i have been internally screaming for weeks but didn’t know how to say anything
Okay so 100% to everything you’ve said PLUS some good news and bad news;
good news: there isa way to remove justices from power, despite what you may think - checks and balances means that they can be impeached too.
bad news: congress has to do it.
good news: with enough effort (a lot of effort), you can absolutely bully congress into doing what you want
bad news: they only listen to their constituents
conclusion = CALL YOUR REPS ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN A RED STATE tell them the supreme court is not representing the best interests of the people and are attempting to undermine decades of legal precedent out of bigotry, and will cause the deaths of hundreds of women due to a disrespect for the concept of privacy that is found implicitly within the constitution on the basis of several of the bill of rights, including the right to free speech, the right to religion, the right to freedom from quarter, and due process laws, which was determined prior to the Roe opinion - someone out there in the activism sphere definitely has scripts ready to go on what to say about this but that person is not me, so that’s all i can advise.
AND IF YOU LIVE IN WEST VIRGINIA, MAKE JOE MANCHIN’S LIFE HELL
all that being said please totally do not *wink wink* continue to harass supreme court justices, the last thing we want is to remind them that they are not above public shaming. its not like they’re political figures and civil servants and thus subject to the criticisms of the people or anything.
anyway FUCK kavanaugh gorsuch barrett and thomas specifically (i have mixed feelings about roberts but he also sucks), its about time court justices get reminded that they aren’t gods among men, especially when changing public opinion about the sanctity of the court is literally their own goddamn fault
Yeah, I was aware that you could impeach justices via Congress, but that would likely require all hell breaking loose and Congress feeling threatened enough to take action.
Which is to say, I’m not holding my breath, but, well… Gee, wouldn’t it be a shame if all hell broke loose?
A lot of people are REALLY WORRIED about the leaked Alito draft, and for good reason. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, many states will enact trigger laws that revoke the right to safe abortion access. But that doesn’t mean that safe abortions won’t be possible. They’ll just be harder to access.
Fortunately, we aren’t powerless. There are things we can do to help preserve the right to abortion and, if Roe falls, help people get the abortions they need.
Here are some actionable things you can do to help!
Donate to your local abortion fund.
This is a financial commitment, obviously, but these funds are vital to helping people access abortions. There are different types of funds. Practical funds help with transportation, housing, and other practical needs. Clinical funds help with paying for the procedure. Both types of funds are necessary and helpful!
If you’re in a state with protected abortion access, see if there’s a practical fund in your state that you can donate to. These funds make it possible for people for other states to afford travel and lodging in your state. You might also want to consider donating to funds in states or regions that have trigger laws, like the Yellowhammer Abortion Fund, which helps people in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Deep South.
There’s also https://abortionfunds.org/, but as of right now (2 May 2022, right after the SCOTUS leak happened), their website is down. Too much traffic!
Volunteer with a hotline.
As of writing this, a lot of abortion fund websites are completely overwhelmed. Lots of people are rightfully upset and looking for some way to help. Many of these funds have hotlines that you can help out directly from your own phone! Google “abortion fund + your state (or your region) + hotline” and see what comes up. These hotlines are going to be SWAMPED soon and many orgs are going to be onboarding volunteers very quickly to help deal with the onslaught.
Donate to grassroots causes.
I love Planned Parenthood as much as the next gal, but donating to them isn’t actually going to help as much right now as donating to an abortion fund. Smaller, grassroots networks are going to be more effective at allocating resources to the people who need it most. Independent clinics are also going to need substantial help. Independent clinics provide the majority of abortion care in the US, and many are the only clinics operating in hostile states. Check out https://keepourclinics.org/ if you’re interested in donating.
Make a list of resources.
There are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have the time or energy or emotional bandwidth to deal with this dumpster fire. If you have the capacity to do so, then maintain a file somewhere with the following information:
- any abortion funds that serve your area with their contact info- email and phone and links
- any abortion hotlines in your area
- national care hotlines, ESPECIALLY RAINN because this is going to be really, really hard on survivors
-a list of crisis pregnancy centers in your area, clearly marked with their names, contact info, and primary links. Make sure that these are highlighted in a way that separates them from the actual abortion providers because these centers are highly predatory and manipulate people who are distressed and confused. If somebody has access to that list and know who’s operating in an area, it might help them avoid these places!
Have this file ready to go so that you can share it with people who are overwhelmed!
Help the safe havens.
Losing Roe feels inevitable at this point. It might not be, but the world is terrifying. However, some states are safe havens and will maintain abortion access, regardless of what SCOTUS eventually decides. Practical access funds in these states will need help because they will help people traveling from unsafe states to safe states. Refer to this map: https://reproductiverights.org/maps/what-if-roe-fell/
Look for funds in states that are blue or yellow. This means they have expanded access or protection if Roe falls. But be sure to hover over and look at the summary of the protection– for example, Florida has abortion protection, but they just passed a 15-week ban. That’s basically protection in name only!
If you’re not sure which practical fund you’d like to support, I highly suggest the Midwest Access Coalition. MAC is based in Chicago and helps people from all over the Midwest come to the city for reproductive healthcare. A lot of the Midwest is really hostile to abortion, so MAC can help a lot of people. But there are many, many others!
In the coming days and weeks, there will be more to do. There will be marches, protests, and other organized action. But right now, tonight, these are things you can look into doing.
I do love it when terrible legislators don’t bother with the media filter and post their unedited thoughts right to social media. Makes it so much easier to gather material.
BTW The ND House Majority Leader, who leads Kiefert’s caucus, was quick to say that party disagrees with Kiefert’s own views.
When I made the movie in 1987, about 1963, I put in the illegal abortion and everyone said, ‘Why? There was Roe v. Wade ― what are you doing this for?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know that we will always have Roe v. Wade.’
Eleanor Bergstein, screenwriter and co-producer of Dirty Dancing
Today, the day the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for a state to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses, kind of sucked for me.
First, let me say that I’m excited about marriage equality. I believe marriage inequality was one of the most severe ways that discrimination was codified into the laws of our nation; it was a United States government-approved message that same-sex relationships were marked as illegitimate or at least less legitimate than ‘opposite’-sex pairings. I also believe bans on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution. I believe this ruling was just. And I am thrilled and moved when I think about my friends who understandably feel like their relationships finally got the validation they deserve today. I am thrilled and moved when I think about the fact that no child will again grow up in the United States thinking that marriage, the validation that comes from a marriage license, and the rights that are awarded as part of being married are off limits to them simply because of whom they love or might love in the future. I think about those of us who did grow up believing that, the people who only in their wildest dreams believed they would someday have access to this institution that (like it or not) is fundamental to our society’s understanding of family – they got that today. Their wildest dreams came true. I am so happy about that. And, full disclosure: as a transgender person, I have a horse in this race, too. Regardless of the assigned sex of my spouse, before today, marriage was a complicated thing for me as no governmental office could really straighten out whether my future marriage would have been “same-sex” or not. And I do plan on getting married and am excited about that part of my future. Let me be clear: I am very happy about this ruling.
And I didn’t want today to suck. I accepted a wonderful friend’s invitation to watch the SCOTUS blog’s live updates and celebrate should they decide for marriage equality. I toasted with champagne and I texted friends – I was glad this was the decision. I was moved and excited for all the reasons I describe above. And I tried to really connect with that – I watched videos of people in my state of Kentucky get marriage licenses that mere hours prior had been prohibited to them. I read statements and listened to speeches praising the decision. I clicked “like” on all the statuses celebrating the ruling. I even had friends get engaged. I also clicked “like” on all the pride-themed facebook photos of my friends (especially my straight and cisgender identified friends). I repeatedly told myself how remarkable it was that I was witnessing this outpouring of mainstream support for same-sex relationships.
I wanted so badly to be purely exuberant. I wanted to lose myself in the celebration of this decision. I wanted to be able to look back in a year or a decade and say “on the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, I couldn’t contain my happiness.” I wanted to join friends for drinks and take instagram pictures with big smiles. I wanted to hug my friends for whom this was really personally meaningful and toast to them. And for the record, I’m mostly really really glad that lots of people were able to do all this. But I couldn’t. I spent most of my day in bed.
I kept thinking about how just yesterday, my partner and I were at a close friend’s house helping him gather his suit so that he could attend the funeral of a veteran and trans woman who took her own life this week. I thought about the people who cared about her pressing their suits and slipping on their black shoes. I thought about this scene of a group of people mourning the deeply felt loss of a trans woman while the streets outside filled with confetti and rainbow flags and celebration of marriage rights. This image kept returning to my mind and I became increasingly pained by the hashtag #lovewins. Love just didn’t feel like it was winning yet to me.
In 1973, Ursula Le Guin wrote a short piece titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It describes an amazing, exciting, energetic, and beautiful summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, where people are truly joyous and successful.
“A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world’s summer; this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life.”
This utopia, however, is contingent upon the imprisonment and suffering of a child, who is locked in a basement. LeGuin describes the town’s awareness of the child’s existence and the absolute rule that not even kind word be spoken to it. She writes that the townspeople of Omelas are often disgusted or angered by this, but ultimately they accept the child’s suffering and ignore it in order to allow for the success and happiness of Omelas.
In many ways, the atmosphere of Omelas that Le Guin describes sounds like the amped-up, utopian version of celebrations happening today. I think it is easy to draw the analogy that like Omelas and its willful ignorance of a suffering child, much of the celebration happening today is contingent upon ignoring the continued suffering that marriage equality cannot change. Plenty of people have written (in more eloquent and informed ways than I can) about this suffering, which sadly extends even beyond the aforementioned epidemic of trans suicide to the violence against trans women of color, to the lack of anti-discrimination clauses that include gender identity (and yes even sexual orientation in some states), to systems that continue to leave no room for non-binary gender identities and expressions, to systems that continue to oppress and further marginalize low income communities and people of color, etc.
Maybe I struggled to fully lose myself in celebration of the marriage equality ruling, because it felt too much like Omelas. That’s what I felt like I was watching play out when the trans woman of color and immigrant who staged a protest during President Obama’s speech at the White House pride gala was laughed at, mocked, dismissed, and called a “heckler” by the crowd of mostly white cisgender gay men who just wanted to celebrate the (albeit exciting and awesome) LGBTQ victories of the past year without having to think about the groups of people they aren’t fighting for.
I think I also believe a few painful things to be true: 1) no victory for trans people or another more marginalized sector of the “LGBTQ” population will ever be celebrated this loudly; 2) the ‘swift change’ that is so exciting regarding public support for same-sex marriage came from hard work and visibility that was possible because there was a lot of financial investment in this fight – because unlike the other issues facing my community, being denied marriage rights is something that actually affects people with privilege; 3) there is a huge risk that support of the LGBTQ orgs who need to continue to fight for the causes listed above (and so many more) will lessen as the rallying cry of marriage equality can no longer be utilized; 4) many of the people celebrating today are part of the social currents and systems that continue to oppress members of the LGBTQ community that are not white, cisgender, typical in gender expression, upper SES, and male.
I don’t fancy myself very radical – I am not really challenging the institution of marriage, and I think marriage equality is important, and I am truly happy and proud that our country has achieved it.
But I couldn’t celebrate it today. Not the way other people were, and not the way I honestly wanted to. I’m glad for people who could. I think a lot of people are very aware of all of the pain and concerns I described and pretty successfully shut that off for a day in order to enjoy a big victory. And that’s appropriate. I’m glad they could.
Today I watched the Kavanough Supreme Court confirmation hearing while working on my American Government homework. What a GREAT time to take this course.
In the history of jurisprudence generally, and in German law in particular, the royal intervention in the Millers Arnold case is infamous for being a violation of judicial independence and thus an act of executive overreach that threatens the foundation of rule of law; that it corrected a manifest injustice is not seen as bearing significantly on the problems of the case, and you may draw what parallels you like with yesterday’s exploration of suo motu actions by courts in South Asia, especially as they converge with public interest litigation in India.
Rule of law is a crucial element of not only a just society in general, but the Great Compromise of liberalism in particular. It’s important to the former, because it’s a component of a predictable rules-based system that ensures equal protection under and equality before the law, and to the latter because a predictable and institutions-based system where avenues of reform are known and consensus-building methods available allows for social systems where people don’t have to worry that, unless they seize power through violence and maintain it by repression, they might suffer intolerably or actually be killed. This is a massively important component of why we don’t, for instance, have to have a succession war every time the executive changes, and in just about every case of violent upheaval in previously peaceful societies I would argue that you can show that either the Great Compromise failed or was never operative.
But rule of law on its own is not justice. This is something that in modern times German jurists have had to struggle with quite notably, because authoritarian systems of government in the 20th and 21st have often been very particular about preserving the forms of rule of law, while getting the outcomes they wanted. This is true of all manner of personalist and populist regimes, and can be seen in Hungary, Poland, and Russia today, but it’s also true of ideological regimes who, even if they may contest specific principles that are seen as integral to rule of law in other countries, like free speech, an independent judiciary or free elections, are still at pains to frame their overall institutions as legitimate, democratic, and principled.
In the postwar era, this principle had to be grappled with in Germany as pro-democracy politicians and jurists had to struggle to articulate what exactly had failed in 1933, how the German state afterward could be treated as illegitimate, even though the formal institutions of the Weimar constitution had remained intact, and how they could build a just and democratic system going forward, which necessarily required repudiating a period of bloody lawlessness, no matter how much it had tried to cloak itself in the law. This is especially important for academic jurisprudence, which as I understand is more important in a civil law system, because legal principles are less often derived directly from judicial decisions (which are far weaker in their precedent-setting capacity) and more often derived from academic writing about the law (which influences and is influenced by the actions of the judiciary and the legislature).
Thus, modern German jurisprudence distinguishes rule of law from rule bylaw. Rule by law may conform to the appearance of rule of law, but it does not owe allegiance to more fundamental principles of justice: the law is an expedient to get the outcome you want, and not reflective of a set of deeper principles you’re trying to uphold through the rules and institutions you put in place. Rule oflaw requires that allegiance, and real rule of law might require opposing institutions or rules–even when procedurally correct–if they violate fundamental principles of justice. You might pass a law somewhere tomorrow, through all the correct methods of constitutional amendment and parliamentary procedure, declaring all left-handed people must pay the government $500 as a one-time tax on their stubborn and immoral behavior of writing with the wrong hand. Under real rule of law, such a law is invalid no matter how popular, how procedurally correct, or how evenly it is implemented, because it’s an inherently unjust act of oppression. No amount of legalistic procedure can rescue it, because it adheres to no principle other than “fuck left-handed people.”
This distinction is really important, because it goes to something about courts that the reams of commentary on Millers Arnold missed, which is that no court can be legitimate unless it actually renders good decisions. Yes, by ordering his courts to rule differently, Frederick II undermined the independence of the Prussian judiciary, and this may have weakened confidence in Prussian courts in the aftermath. It’s hard to have a rules-based system of government if the king often arbitrarily reverses decisions of his courts. But the real problem is deeper: it was a bad decision. If courts cannot be expected to render good decisions, a crisis of legitimacy will follow, because manifestly unjust courts are an equal or bigger problem for rule of law than judicial independence. In the modern world, where we rely on things like the Great Compromise to prevent violent revolution (Prussia did not have that; there’s a reason the Prussian monarchy no longer exists), courts that make bad decisions violate a fundamental tenet of the Compromise.
An intervention like Frederick’s, or like the suo motu actions of Indian courts, doesn’t really protect rule of law at the expense of rule by law; the best it can do is correct a unique injustice in a non-systematic way, and in that case it might be an individually positive outcome, albeit one that comes at a notable institutional cost. Ideally, it could help improve faith in systems of justice (or in the Compromise itself), while reform is pursued through other avenues, to prevent long-term harm and to reduce the need for such interventions in the first place. In practice it doesn’t seem to do that, unfortunately, meaning the downside is even greater, though correcting the individual injustice is still very good. If you do not have the opportunity for these one-off interventions by a higher authority to correct injustices, you improve the resilience of your institutions, which is usually a good thing. But you also lose an important valve for letting off pressure if those institutions are dysfunctional.
With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s talk about the US Supreme Court.
The US Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v Wade, a decision which even many supporters of the political outcome think is decided on shaky theoretical grounds. Because of the way law is created and interpreted in common law systems, the theoretical grounds of a decision like Roe are more important than they would be in a civil law system, though my understanding is that the picture is more complicated than just a decision creating law: in principle two different decisions might reach the same conclusion based on different rationales, and it would be up to future judges in future cases to negotiate exactly which rationale they should use when interpreting the law going forward. Overturning a decision outright is rare, especially when you have the option of saying “okay, Case A rendered the right decision for the wrong reasons; in this case, we’re going to alter the reasoning a little bit to make interpretation of the law more consistent going forward.”
Maintaining Roe in some form is supported by an absolutely silly proportion of the US population, AFAICT; something like 65%, in an era when 65% of Americans can’t agree that the sky is in fact blue. Support for specific restrictions on abortion is much more varied, because this is a subject that politically the country is fairly ambivalent on, but the Supreme Court has many tools in its toolkit besides “let one court case from 1973 stand or fall on its own,” and outright reversal of that decision is likely to be broadly seen as a bad move. This, on its own, is not necessarily a problem: courts often have the job of making merely unpopular decisions in the name of justice. That doesn’t mean they’re failing to abide by higher principles. Sometimes–as in Loving v Virginia–it just means popular opinion is unprincipled.
I’m not actually concerned with Roe directly here, but I do think that Roe bears on the idea of a crisis of legitimacy in the Supreme Court, which the Court is rightly worried about. Unfortunately, the Court does not understand what the source of this crisis is: it is the fact that the Court has become concerned almost solely with rule by law, rather than rule of law. Much more indicative of this trend than Roe is Shinn v Ramirez, in which the court ruled that a mere probability of innocence isn’t enough to void a conviction, even in a capital case; more fundamental procedural violations must have occurred to prevent the penalty from being carried out (in this case, execution).
This is a huge problem. Isolated from external concerns–that is to say, in an abstract and theoretical void, which is where SCOTUS seems to dwell–procedure is indeed of great importance. Procedure is a component of an equal application of the law, a way to instrumentalize more fundamental principles in a way transparent to those who are subject to a court’s authority. But those fundamental principles still matter; indeed, they matter more than procedure, because rule of law is not the same as rule by law.
The fundamental principle at stake in a criminal trial is the guilt of the accused. If procedure cannot accommodate overturning a verdict which is incompatible with this principle, the procedure is unsalvagable. It is a violation of the very purpose of law; we may as well revert to mob violence, which at least doesn’t require paying bailiffs or maintaining expensive neoclassical buildings on valuable downtown real estate. If the Supreme Court cannot see the underlying principle beyond the screen of procedure, then the Supreme Court is setting its own legitimacy on fire. Overturning Roe is relevant here only insofar as it’s a manifestation of a broader trend of the Supreme Court setting its own legitimacy on fire, then complaining about the smell of smoke.
Moreover, this is not a new phenomenon. Shinn v Ramirez is part of a long line of tough-on-crime court decisions and legislative acts (especially in capital cases) that sacrifice fundamental principles in favor of smoothing procedure for state actors; on the basis of “reforming the death penalty” the right to habeas corpus was severely curtailed in 1996, with the fundamental principle of protecting the rights of the accused being sacrificed to the much more contingent procedural question of how easy it should be for the state to kill someone. Note also the raft of cases as the drugs commonly used in executions have become less available in the US; SCOTUS has repeatedly opted to weaken principles against cruel and unusual punishment rather simply require the state not to torture prisoners to death or not kill them if it can’t do it in a way compatible with the constitution, which is a startling reversal of principle is supposed to govern the law. Most peoples’ moral intuition, I suspect, is that while the law may permit the state to do a thing, if it cannot do the thing in a just manner, it should not do it; SCOTUS seems to think, however, that if the law permits the state to do a thing, then by definition it is possible to do in a just manner, regardless of the facts on the ground.
It is increasingly difficult to escape the conclusion that, especially as it pertains to criminal law and the death penalty in the US, the single most significant opponent to the rule of law is the Supreme Court. An institution as defensive and insular as the Supreme Court will not reform itself, nor do I expect external pressure to cause it to reform. If the rule of law is to be maintained in the United States–if the fundamental principles on which the law is built and which it is necessary to preserve to prevent that rule from being replaced by empty ritual that can reach arbitrary conclusions–then the Supreme Court must be destroyed. I do not believe it can be reformed. I do not believe any of its current justices are redeemable, since they are the product of a selection process which has consistently produced lawless outcomes. It must be replaced by an institution which hears cases more consistently, and therefore which has many more justices; this would also prevent the highly variable outcomes that result from selection effects and reduce the political fracas around individual appointments. Its members, and all federal judges, should be nominated through non-political means. And if nominees for the federal judiciary cannot agree that, as a matter of first principle, the state should not execute those who are actually innocent of the crime they are accused of, and should strive to its utmost ability to avoid that outcome, they should be entirely disqualified.
I needed context for this. This seemed reasonable, though clearly biased in the same direction of op
Note that this case exists in parallel to another trend, that of bad “forensic evidence” (essentially nonsense made up by self-styled experts without scientific support) used to effect dubious criminal prosecutions. One example is Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed for murder based on false evidence. There has been increasing reporting in recent years of the unreliability of basically everything except DNA and fingerprinting, but this is the general prosecutorial environment that cases like this have arisen out of. Cf. also the You’re Wrong About episode on shaken baby syndrome, and for an older example, the one on the Satanic Panic.
IMO the willingness to allow a death penalty to be upheld despite major problems with the case is, like an enthusiasm by courts for bad evidence as long as it supports the prosecution’s theories, part of a general trend toward undermining foundational elements of criminal justice in favor of procedural facilitation of prosecution, as part of the reactionary “tough on crime” discourse that started in the 80s and 90s. The Supreme Court alone is not responsible for this trend, but the Supreme Court has most certainly facilitated it and offered legal theories to support it, including some spectacularly bad rulings around capital punishment specifically.
(That on top of this members of the court have the audacity to want to be treated as austere intellectuals operating in the rarefied realm of legal theory while they are personally responsible for the execution of innocents is incrediblygalling to me. The place to do theoretical work unconnected to actual instances of human suffering is academia, not actual courts, and clearly you don’t take the responsibility of your job seriously if you don’t appreciate the effect it has on the material conditions of the hundreds of millions of people in the country whose legal system you sit at the top of.)
He sacrificed his son, who is also god himself in a human form.
Also, god is ok with priests giving potions to pregnant women who’ve potentially cheated on their husbands so that they would miscarry the baby if the baby was the lovers and not the husbands.
ThIs Joe Biden quote will be relevant (especially since he became President of the United States) till his administration does something very significant to protect woman’s rights to do with her body as she wishes. Codifying Roe v Wade for example.
