"You can blame it on ignorance if you want, but a majority of the people do not want Roe v Wade overturned even though in other polling they disagree with its application."
I do not see any ignorance.
If what you say is true, than Americans are in favor of the abortion law as it exists, and are content to have the Supreme Court as the final arbiter and most powerful source of law.
If Americans are content with this structure, then it is democratic that it be just as it is.
Perhaps I do listen to too many Americans of the Right, and see what they say confirmed on information outlets such as FreeRepublic.
Given this, I would say that I prefer the French system of law and rights, though it is very far from perfect. The rights and restrictions I care most about seem to be more protective of the things I hold dearest, such as privacy and the sense that my home is mine own, in French law than in American. Also, the things I find most immoral, abortion for example, is much more limited in France than in America.
But that is democracy.
If what the US Supreme Court did today is not overridden by Congress, then I will know that it, too, is the democratic will of the people such as you have described it above in the case of abortion. I will also know that, while those who hold to a more traditional view of the private home as I do are very vocal at FreeRepublic, Americans in general support the law that the Supreme Court made today. The lesson I take from what you wrote is that if a Supreme Court decision is not overturned, it is therefore ratified by the American democracy because it wasn't overturned.
I will be watching, therefore, with interest to see if the American democracy overturns this ruling today or, by not doing so, if it is silently proven that the silent majority of Americans actually approves of the outcome, as they do Roe v. Wade, by what you have said.
Very interesting.
I had not looked at it that way before.
Slavery was not the will of the Americans, because they overturned Dred Scott with a Civil War.
But segregation was, because they did not overturn Plessy.
That there should be no labor protection was the will of the Americans under Lochner, until the Americans decided that they needed regulation of private property and the economy, starting with West Coast Hotel and continuing to this very day's decision.
Americans want gays to be able to practice sodomy, because the overruling of Bowers v. Hartwick has stood, and if gay marriage sustains in Massachussetts, the people there support it.
Fascinating.
I have to say, I do not like it.
It is too indirect.
I think there are far too many barriers to overturning the Supreme Court. I think that supreme power should repose in the elected branch, not the non-elected branch. But this is apparently a difference of philosophy. From what you have told me, I understand that Americans do not really trust themselves, and do not, therefore, want their elected officials to make the most important decisions. They want immune judges to make those decisions for them, and only if the decision is egregious enough to get two thirds of the House and of the Senate, and three-quarters of the states to agree to overturn the Supreme Court, should the democracy prevail when it disagrees with the judges.
As I say, fascinating.
Fascinating, but, I am sorry to say, strangely repulsive.
You are being sarcastic, but your statements are almost completely correct: Americans as at the time of the respective rulings didn't want slavery,* they most certainly wanted segregation without question, there is no doubt whatsoever that a majority want gays to be legally permitted to engage in sodomy (a lesser majority also wants gays to choose not to do so), and a slight majority of people in Massachusetts want them permitted to marry according to polls (but we'll find out for sure when they get to vote).
*It's actually questionable whether a majority of Americans opposed slavery in 1857. It certainly was not enough of a majority to overturn the decision by constitutional amendment, and the Civil War was not fought over slavery but over secession. The answer appears to be that before the war a majority wanted slavery reformed, but not abolished.
PPS. I was just thinking that you'd be on much stronger grounds if you focus on the Supreme Court rulings that involve religion and some of the criminal justice decisions. You'll have a much, much better argument that the Supreme Court is trampling the will of the people.