hi. basically, i'm a high-schooler in a magnet program with a focus on law and public policy - meaning that i've spent the better part of my freshman year understanding the inner workings of law and government. with the recent overturning of the precedent case roe v wade, i'm sure you've read about how dangerous this decision is to afab people all over the united states. it's a atrocious offense to minority rights, disproportionately impacts racial minorities and low-income people, and is downright life-threatening to many. it's ridiculous from a civil rights perspective, but that's not why i'm here - there's plenty of outrage and information about the impact of the ruling, and that's great. go google it yourself! i'm not here to talk about why abortion should be legal, or even how the ruling impacts people. but, here's my take on this decision from a political perspective. generally speaking, precedent cases can be overturned "if a prior decision is deemed unworkable or if significant social changes have occurred." okay. scotus decisions have been overturned before. scotus decisions that extend a constitutional right to the people have never been overturned - not until now. i will admit that roe wasn't based on the strongest concrete constitutional precedent but that is generally accepted to be totally fine, especially in a situation like roe - obvious, clear-cut judicial pragmatism/living constitutionalism stemming from development in society since the writing of the constitution. not only is this dangerous to afab people's rights, it's also incredibly dangerous to the very concept of the supreme court. federalist 78 makes the argument for life tenure, pointing out that the life tenure of a justice is a good thing to protect decisions made from undue political influence ("in a republic [life tenure] is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body") and be sure that the decisions made maintain consistency in law. however, if the overturning of cases is allowed to be widespread, impactful, and consistent, then what protects the scotus from overturning conservative decisions when democrat-majority, and liberal decisions when at a republican-majority? hamilton literally warns that if "periodical appointments, however regulated... would in some way or another be fatal to [the judge's] necessary independence." he goes on to say that the executive or legislative branch screwing with the scotus would be disastrous, yet here we are - presidential appointments can now effectively determine not only important precedent cases (especially with the interwoven manner of judicial precedent and decisions (basically if a case was set on a precedent that roe v wade established, then its decision now might be in jeopardy because of the overturning, which is 1. bad to minorities affected by similar cases such as obergefell, lawrence, griswold and 2. causes a lot of chaos and inconsistency that isn't conductive to a stable political scene) ) but also overturn previous precedents, which - as i just explained - is very not-good for multiple reasons. the overturning of roe is not only an affront to afab rights and bodily anatomy that - may i remind you - has been established and working well for a long time - but it's also a threat to the integrity of the supreme court as a whole. to summarize - the scotus roe decision shows that the court is much too politically impacted by ideology and presidency, which is dangerous to the independence of the branch and the integrity of - well, everything! if you have taken even the most rudimentary of us history classes, you will know that separation of powers = integral to independence and freedom. however, now it's shown that constitutional decisions can be impacted by the presidency. don't believe me? trump himself said in a friday statement that "today's decision... was only made possible because i... nominat[ed] and [got] three highly respected and strong constitutionalists confirmed to the scotus." he literally admitted to taking credit for the decision - that level of influence is not a good thing! the decision also endangers crucial legal doctrines such as stare decisis (aka precedent; google it) and the stability of the scotus as a whole. (also apparently the scotus also looked at the news and decided that we need more easily accessible guns in public. yeah. great job, guys.) sources - https://ballotpedia.org/overturned federalist 78 by alexander hamilton https://abcnews.go.com/politics/roe-ruling-stare-decisis-dead-supreme-court-view/story?id=84997047 (note: it's a left-leaning source! however it was only used for the stare decisis statistics about overturned cases, so it wasn't that biased because it was a concrete fact i was using) please, feel free to start discourse in the comments as long as it is respectful. i would love to have a conversation about this.
