How just one decision on the Supreme Court can confuse us mortals.
The Supreme Court Of The United States handed down a couple of rulings last Tuesday ( I covered one of them here at Red State Supreme Court: Transgender People Can Use Any Bathroom In Schools) and I found some interesting analysis about our beer loving Associate Justice, Bret Kavanaugh.
He possibly made both pro-life and pro-abortion forces unhappy. If he could somehow make the people who don’t care ticked off, he would get a hat trick and be in the SCOTUS Hall of Fame.
Analysts on both Fox News and CNN had differing takes on Kavanaugh in regards to his vote in regards to an Indiana law regarding the abortion “process”
From Fox News legal contributor Judge Napolitano via Newsweek…
The Supreme Court chose to sidestep part of a case that could have challenged the constitutional right to abortion set down as precedent by Roe v. Wade in 1973. The top court chose to overturn an appeal to reinstate a strict Indiana abortion law, which was signed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was still governor of the midwestern state. Meanwhile the judicial body also upheld part of the same law, which implement regulations regarding the disposal of fetal remains.
“You’re going to see the right to life people very harshly criticizing Justice Kavanaugh because this is the second time he disappointed them by presumably … agreeing not to interfere with a decision below that is perceived as being pro-abortion,” Napolitano, who previously served as a New Jersey Superior Court judge, said on Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom after news of the top court’s decision broke.
Over at CNN, legal analyst Jeffery Toobin had a different take…
Although he recognized that the ruling from the nation’s top court was “a relatively pro-choice ruling,” he criticized the decision to uphold the part of the law regulating disposal of fetal remains.
“This is all the fallout of Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed to replace Anthony Kennedy,” Toobin said. “Anthony Kennedy was a firm vote to support a woman’s right to choose abortion.”
What gives?
This country is so split on the emotional issue of abortion, that one guys vote on the Supreme Court can make two different people who are knowledgeable in the law look at something like this differently. The Indiana law was not the one that will be challenging the “precedent” of Roe V Wade, that will come later in the next year possibly. This was meant to continue to chip away at that decision and it did.
Kavanaugh split the difference and depending on your point of view is not as great as you had hoped or not as bad as you had thought. Shades of Chief justice John Roberts doing the same kabuki dance to save Obamacare comes to mind.
The real test will be when Roe is challenged directly and see where all of the justices will come done on that eventual case. Then we will find out if Justice Kavanaugh is as bad as the screaming protestors at his hearing thought or as good as Pro-Life people had hoped.
I might cancel my cable the week that decision comes down or I will get confused by the analysis from the experts listed above.
Check out my other post on Supreme Court: Transgender People Can Use Any Bathroom In Schoolsand my podcast Bourbon On The Rocks plus like Bourbon On The Rocks on Facebook and follow me on the twitters at IRISHDUKE2
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