A clear majority wants the Supreme Court to uphold abortion rights, polls say
More than 60 percent of Americans want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, according to recent polls.
. . . .
Such a decision would not align with the views of most Americans, according to the polls.
Sixty-one percent of Americans want a new justice who will vote to uphold Roe, while only 31 percent prefer a judge who will overturn it, an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday found.
And yet when asked they want the provisions of the constitution interpreted and applied much as the Federalist Society would insist.
I don't want the constitution interpreted and applied in that manner, partly because contrary readings are often equally plausible, partly because some crucial provisions are hopelessly vague, partly because we are so far from the world of the 18th Century that it is mad to have an 18th Century government, partly because the Federalist Papers, while informative and helpful, are not part of the constitution and were neither reviewed nor voted on at the Convention, partly because the document is so often crucially silent, and partly because when it is not silent it is so often absurd.
Is paper money constitutional?
The Federal Reserve System?
The Air Force?
What about Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Obamacare?
If Article I Section Eight clauses 1 and 18 are grants of substantive powers they are all constitutional.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
If not then none of them are.
Liberals commonly say they are, making all of them legit.
Conservatives are the hypocrites who say they are not in order to undermine these and other progressive creations while recoiling from the evident implication the Federal Reserve System and the US Air Force, too, must go.
Which reading is reasonable? The matter was contested from the start.
Can the federal government impose a minimum wage, impose and control a program of unemployment insurance, extensively regulate workplace safety, and intensively, police the market in food and drugs?
Can labor law provide that, on a majority vote, all workers for a company can be represented by a union they must all join and to which they must all pay dues?
Looking at the commerce clause as well as the above clauses, liberals say yes.
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes
Conservatives read the same texts and say no, while reading Article I Section 10 Clause 1 (impairment of contracts) as denying ability to do these things to the states.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Does the government need a warrant to tap your phone, intercept your emails, or use electronic equipment to eavesdrop on what is going on in your house?
To take your fingerprints?
To take your DNA?
Moderns read the Fourth Amendment and insist the government does need a warrant.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Does the constitution by implication ( via emanations and penumbras, perhaps) create a federal right to privacy that the 14th Amendment imposes also on states, that disallows prohibition of use of birth control, that disallows criminalization of homosexuality, and that disallows criminalization of abortion if the unborn are not legal persons and so lack rights?
Liberals nowadays say yes to all of that, while conservatives deny it all.
And there is just so much utter silence in the constitution, providing occasion for endless dispute and inviting judges and politicians to fill lacunae with a constitution of invisible ink.
What is due process?
What is equal protection of the laws?
Whence comes incorporation?
Can a cabinet member be fired, and by whom?
Cabinet members must report to the president, but nothing says they serve at his pleasure or even that they must obey him, no matter the outrage such a truth must provoke in the hearts of partisans of ever greater presidential power.
Can a president pardon people in advance of their crimes?
Can he pardon himself?
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