The U.S. Supreme Court has been taking a beating lately at the hand of its new school of detractors, especially since President Donald Trump appointed three new justices that have helped to veer the Court back to constitutional moorings. No longer finding the Court their nine person legislature to back up their leftists policies and legislation through its decisions, Democrats, led by the Biden administration, are now ready to expand the court, thinking at this moment they could water down this new constitutionalism. They even want to suggest that a “code of conduct” is necessary perhaps to disqualify some of this new breed. It’s just another tantrum, plus an uncalled for smear.
Mr. Luther Munford wants to join this number, it seems, with his charges in last week’s article (“U.S. Supreme Court Is Not Conservative”August 3, 2024). At first, he gives two connotations he wants to work with and goes off from there with his critique of the Court.
But there’s a third general connotation of the word “conservative,” and that is “constitutional.” I like it better. It means also “textual” and that suggests the close adherence of the “text” of the constitution, when it prescribes or is silent. Silent, say in the application of regulations, prohibitions, etc. and we’re not used to that, so it seems novel!
Munford uses the device “since 1789” over and over again to stress the novelty he sees in the recent decisions, but that’s far too simplistic an approach. If he is a lawyer, he knows it is much more complicated than that.
What part of NO don’t city councils and legislatures understand? They keep passing laws that seek to limit gun ownership and personal possession and they’re all UNCONSTITUTIONAL, meaning invalid! The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the Court that finally decided all that—I want to say forever but I know that’s not possible. Times change. The Second Amendment right to bear arms is near absolute.
Regarding the critiqued Dobbs decision on abortion, a new precedent affirming a a wise and strategically written Mississippi law, at least two factors are at play. Outside of the abortion industry, for years many legal scholars felt the discomfort of the Roe vs Wade decision. That Court made a decision based on shoddy legal, scientific, and sociological findings on the beginning of life and an application of national proportions.
It was wrongly decided, not on biblical and moral grounds only, but on law. Justice Samuel Alito pointed that out in his 100 page plus Dobbs decision of the Court. The left-leaning Justice Ruth Ginsburg admitted that once in a law journal article.
Not being part of that Roe court, Justice Scalia once decried the arrogance of that court that decided the BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE! What divine wisdom seeped into these human beings on donning black robes that enabled them to make that call? he asked. The very idea! He wanted to have that decision reversed on the cases relating to Roe and voted so albeit vainly. Medical school does not have a course to prepare one to make a decision like that, much less does law school!
Let the people make the call on a state by state basis through their elected representatives. That’s the best we can get in our human, democratic context and Mississippi has made its call.
Much the same holds with all these alphabet agencies and departments of national and state governments that make calls that our elected Congress and legislatures should be making and be held accountable for. Stop passing the buck. Bureaucrats often go too far and anonymous employees make calls that are uncalled for and sometimes illegal. Munford decries the Court’s inference with them. The people are left by-passed and these people need to be fed and watered—meaning salaried and benefited paid for by you know who! Yes, we have a complicated society and world, but we want to have a voice through our elected representatives and not some rogue bureaucrat in the Deep State. That’s the best we can do in a democratic nation.
The current Court is not “activist,” it’s Constitutional. I think Mississippians like it.
Robert L. Penny is a Northsider.
