The Truth About the Dodd Decision
As usual, the press, and even most left wing sources I have seen, have failed utterly to explain the threat to our country posed by the recent Dobbs decision by the six corrupt right wing Supreme Court Justices. The focus has been entirely on the erosion of the position of women in society, and in the process the real intent of this action has been virtually totally missed.
I have to say before going further that I am not denying that this malicious decision represents a massive injury to women in our country. It does, but even that damage promises to be a small thing compared to the attack on our rights that is the real goal of this action. In fact, the true target of the Dobbs decision is the doctrine of Stare Decisis, something which has been a mainstay of English common law since the 1400's, and which underlies the most basic principles of American jurisprudence.
Before I go further, I think I should provide a little more information. Here, from a publication of the Cornell Law School, is a bit of context:
"Stare decisis is the doctrine that courts will adhere to precedent in making their decisions. Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided” in Latin.
When a court faces a legal argument, if a previous court has ruled on the same or a closely related issue, then the court will make their decision in alignment with the previous court’s decision. The previous deciding-court must have binding authority over the court; otherwise, the previous decision is merely persuasive authority. In Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises, the U.S. Supreme Court described the rationale behind stare decisis as “promot[ing] the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, foster[ing] reliance on judicial decisions, and contribut[ing] to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.”
Let me speculate, as a layman, about what lies beneath this doctrine. Stare Decisis basically relies on the confidence of current judges that the people who made judicial rulings in the past were informed enough about the law, and perhaps more importantly, had enough commitment to the concept of justice, that they made decisions with wisdom and a sense of human decency. Obviously, that is not always true. Until the recent Fascist outbreak in the Republican party, you would have been hard pressed to find a single honest person that would argue in favor of the abominable decision in the Dred Scott case, or that the decision in Plessey v. Feguson, which may have been made with the best intentions, did not prove, in the light of later events, to be wholly inadequate to its task. However, these are phenomenally rare occasions, and Americans can be proud of the long record of judges acting in an honorable manner, and within the bounds of existing law.
It is this long record and the judicial consensus around it that is the true target of the Dodd decision. It is, in fact, an outright assault on the concept of Stare Decisis, stating that current (corrupt, right wing) Justices have no responsibility to the past or to the intellectual work of others. It is a ticket to Judicial anarchy, in which whoever controls a majority of the Supreme Court feels free to mangle the law in any way that suits their purpose.
This is hardly an attitude that was born yesterday. The corrupt decision in Bush v. Gore, the absolutely catastrophic misreading of the law in Citizens United, or the ludicrous argument by Scalia in Heller v. District of Columbia, among many others, prove that Republican Justices have no respect for the history of the American legal system, or even for any legal argument, no matter how brilliant, that stands in the way of Republican rule; i.e. a Fascist oligarchy.
With the current 6-3 majority, this attitude has emerged into open view. For these miserable criminals (because that is what they are) any "law," any legal ruling that serves their sociopathic masters is fine, and anyone who stands in their way can be crushed at will, regardless of the shamelessness of their rulings. This is where we now stand, and the very irrationality of their behavior on the bench only serves to further erode public confidence in the judiciary, making it easier to convince masses of voters that Stare Decisis is some sort of meaningless relic of another time.
In the end the Dodd decision is a giant step in the Republican campaign to redefine the role of the courts as nothing but a tool to be legitimately used by partisan fanatics (Republican partisan fanatics, anyway) to grab whatever they want, without a thought of the consequences. In other words, it is just one more part of the Republican agenda of the last half century- to destroy any expectation that our country exists for the benefit of anyone except the most deranged and cruel among us.
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