Posted on 07/02/2022 10:44:12 PM PDT by NoLibZone
The conservative supermajority has weaponized this harmful judicial philosophy as a way to embrace a racist, patriarchal narrowing of political rights.
Even as the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court was sworn in Thursday, the slate of rulings from the newly empowered, right-wing and originalist court majority this term has made it clearer than ever that the court is motivated by a reliance on the white supremacist patriarchy of the Constitution’s framers.
With Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade last week, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court has signaled its desire to “make America great again” using 18th and 19th century standards to address modern problems. Specifically, these rulings rely heavily on a judicial philosophy called originalism, which argues that in interpreting the Constitution, we must hold the intent — i.e., the thought processes of the framers — above all else.
Originalist judges express a belief that we should interpret the U.S. Constitution according to the legal opinions of 18th century white men. In other words, in those decisions, originalist judges express a belief that we should interpret the U.S. Constitution according to the legal opinions of 18th century white men — the same white men who denied the right to vote or own property to anyone but themselves.
But I would submit that the reason that such a judicial view is not only possible, but also predominant, among our highest jurists is because so few of us white men (and increasingly, white women) have been willing, over these last centuries, to question our inheritance of historic American privilege.
Originalism is patriarchal white supremacy.
The debates surrounding the framing of the Constitution reveal fraught compromises between the rich white men balancing the interests of the states with the interests of the union. The delegates from my home state of South Carolina, for example, used a tortured, self-serving rationale to justify their continued importation of enslaved people from Africa.
“If Slavery be wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world,” Charles Pinckney, a Revolutionary War hero and a member of South Carolina’s delegation to the convention — and a slaveholder — said, per a New York Times account. “An attempt to take away the right, as proposed, will produce serious objections to the Constitution.”
The framers ultimately reached a compromise where the importation of enslaved people would face a sunset clause, but would not be immediately outlawed. And thus the domestic trade in enslaved people — and the political empowerment of those who enslaved them — was enshrined in the nation’s founding document.
My family traced some genealogical connection to Pinckney and taught me to be proud that I had descended from someone at the Constitutional Convention. But when I see his words, I can feel nothing but shame and revulsion.
Originalists feel no such shame. When the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, we no longer had to consider what the framers said about the issue, the originalists argue, because the amendment superseded the original intent.
But it is impossible to sever a man like Pinckney’s thoughts on slavery from the rest of his worldview — especially someone who grew up in a place like Charleston, a onetime heart of the nation’s slave trade, and on a plantation surrounded by people over whom his family exacted absolute control in order to extract absolute value.
But it is impossible to sever a man like Pinckney’s thoughts on slavery from the rest of his worldview. Even if we allow that the Constitution was eventually amended to undo Pinckney’s monstrous beliefs about who was a human, it is hard to trust any argument that relies on his or his contemporaries' intent, none of whom could have envisioned Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Though Justice Clarence Thomas is also descended from those enslaved by the founders, he has long been one of the court’s most staunch originalists — though now, following then-President Donald Trump’s appointees, he has a lot more competition.
In the court’s ruling on Dobbs, the majority highlighted its originalist bent, saying a woman’s right to abortion was not protected because it was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Of course, there were no women in the Constitutional Convention, or in other positions of power at the time. That does not mean there were no abortions.
But in his concordance, Thomas took this rationale further, signaling the need to “correct” other precedent that strayed from the intent of the framers. In effect, Thomas argues that rights that were “unenumerated” in the Constitution are not necessarily legitimate, specifically taking aim at the principle of substantive due process, which was a bedrock of the decisions protecting same-sex marriage and contraception.
Unfortunately, originalism is far from the court’s only problem, as its decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency made clear. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in her dissent, the majority decision in West Virginia v. EPA seems to abandon the textualist basis of the originalist doctrine espoused in Dobbs.
“The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it,” Kagan wrote. “When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get out-of-text-free cards.”
Notably, Thomas voted in the majority here.
The purpose of environmental regulation is to prevent those with power from harming all of those without it. The court’s decision, which dovetails with mainstream conservative thought, privileges once again the so-called freedoms of the white patriarchy over all else, with a particular disdain for regulations designed protect marginalized communities or, in this case, the planet.
When Charles Pinckney argued that South Carolina would not join the new nation if they could not continue to import, torture, rape and brutalize other human beings, he was articulating the same philosophy espoused by those who seek to destroy the administrative state.
The attempt to return to a white supremacist patriarchal state links the desire to dismantle the administrative state with the constitutional originalism of the court’s new majority. And both, like white supremacy and patriarchy, dress up a naked grab for power in the rhetoric of principle and legal logic.
Originalism is not simply a neutral judicial philosophy. When weaponized, as it has been by this Supreme Court, it is transformed into a political tactic and a serious-sounding way to embrace a white supremacist, patriarchal narrowing of the political rights exercised by many Americans.
This reads like a quote from one of the 'prosecutors' in the 1936 Soviet Show Trials.
They cannot defend Roe nor cite the constitutional authority....so it is fear mongering, accusations of racism, etc.
These people are empty
Enough, the people who believe this should either self-deport or self-abort. This is nonsense, insanity, sedition and simple begging for teeth extraction. I’ll have none of it.
Works for me!
How did slavery end? Not by court action but by ratification of constitutional amendment. These racist, patriarchal whites men gave us all the tools necessary to evolve our laws in the interest of liberty. It’s done through the representative government and constitutional amendment. Courts exist to interpret the law not make law. Leftists are all about “democracy” in politics until they must put up or shut up. They prefer judicial tyranny. They can’t avoid responsibility for policy or accountability to voters if they have to act rather than hide behind judicial fiats like the power and wealth corrupted cowards they are.
I’m just so upset the political class has to face the music instead of playing the endless blame game and kicking the can down the road. /s
Trump wanted action and results. Politicians want intractable problems they can run on forever.
The left says anything they don’t like is “white supremacy”. Anytime I hear the accusation about someone or some thing, I know its something good - otherwise the Leftists wouldn’t hate it.
Everything the media doesn’t like is white supremacy or some type of phobia. I don’t care. I’m voting against the media as often as I can and with glee.
Its very simple. The constitution means what the people who ratified it thought it meant.
It DOES NOT MATTER if you don’t like those people any more than it matters that they were White or that they were males. Its the same way with contracts. What do the words say? What did the parties agree to? You can’t just unilaterally change it to suit your whims.
If you want to change it, there is a mechanism for doing exactly that. You can make literally any change you want to it. Just follow the process that is required as per the Constitution itself.
What’s that? Its tough to do that? You can’t get enough people to support your lunatic ideas in order to get an amendment passed? Well as my Con Law prof taught us in the first year of law school, that falls under the “tough chit doctrine”. ie you do not get what you want.
I saw an ATL company executive’s Fourth of July message where he says Americans have it basically as good or better than anywhere else. How inspirational and aspirational can we get? Good grief.
The White suprematist boogeyman is an essential talking point for the Left as a mean to bully and control dissent. Trump speeches, policies and results were inclusive across demographics. He wanted every American to win because MAGA was not a zero sum game where for one group to win another had to lose. Everyone could enjoy prosperity. Trump cared about crime victims, cared about victims of racist policies put in place by Joe and others, cared about opioid addicts, Trump cared about safety and economic prosperity. Trump cared about working people, the sick and the elderly through competitive drug cost policies and transparency reforms.
Trump remains an existential threat to politics as usual which have failed us all for far too long.
Socialist idiots believe we should fashion the world after the writings of a lazy white man (Marx) whose philosophy has led to the death and/or suffering of 100s of millions already.
But if they did, they’d want to come back.
There’s one woke celebrity sitting in Russian jail begging and trying to shame the US through her privileged media connections to get her back to the land of the free and home of the brave.
It’s beyond boring, and timed to slander and libel this great country on the 4th of July.
reasons why we need to elect people who will slap them so hard their dead grandmothers will feel it and never let them up
“The White suprematist boogeyman is an essential talking point for the Left as a mean to bully and control dissent.”
It is also a tactic to sub-divide people into groups, pit them against each other, keeping them in their own narrow group characteristic and allow these minority communists to have power over all.
White supremacy is the cause of everything. One of my tires was a little low this morning and I had to fill it with air.
First black “woman” seated on SCOTUS?
Prove it... It doesn’t know what a woman is.
To paraphrase: Words have only the meaning I sat they have, and I reserve the right to change my opinion. I also reserve the right to demonize any dissent.
Wasn’t that the caterpillar?
I thought of the same passage.
Somebody's got their panties in a twist.
The Left’s Core Strategy #1: Scream accusations of racism (or racist attacks) at anything you don’t like or which slows your agenda.
The Left’s Core Strategy #2: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. “
The Left’s Core Strategy #3: Passionately attack Republicans for actions you are undertaking.
The Left’s Core Strategy #4: When all else fails, deploy violence.
The Left’s Core Strategy #5: Repeat.
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