{"id":377475,"date":"2018-09-16T09:43:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T08:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-stop-at-roe-how-settled-law-can-be-overturned\/"},"modified":"2018-09-16T09:43:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T08:43:41","slug":"why-stop-at-roe-how-settled-law-can-be-overturned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-stop-at-roe-how-settled-law-can-be-overturned\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Stop at\u00a0Roe? How \u201cSettled Law\u201d Can be Overturned"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1536752933759_9461\">\n<div id=\"attachment_105328\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105328\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/09\/5554035521_899ffc8f87_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/09\/5554035521_899ffc8f87_z.jpg 510w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/09\/5554035521_899ffc8f87_z-300x172.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo Source Phil Roeder | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Senate hearings on the nomination of\u00a0Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the\u00a0Supreme Court was a political charade. Everyone knows that the fix is in. The Republicans control the Senate and, like the earlier appointment of Neil Gorsuch, will push\u00a0Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination through unless some yet-undisclosed serious scandal is revealed.<\/p>\n<p>The hearings were enacted like\u00a0the staging of a performance of the theatre of the absurd.\u00a0\u00a0Both Republican and Democratic Senators played their respective parts with Broadway-like perfection, with Senator\u00a0Cory Booker\u00a0(D-NJ) likely to win a Tony Award.<\/p>\n<p>One issue at the heart of the political minuet is the\u00a0doctrine of\u00a0<em>stare decisis<\/em>,\u00a0which means\u00a0\u201cto stand by things decided.\u201d In short, it is the notion of\u00a0\u201csettled law,\u201d the legal fiction that a prior Supreme Court decision sets precedent and that it rarely overturns the prior decision and, if so, only for compelling reasons.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most recent and consequential reversals in Court \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/judiciary\/404934-settled-law-is-not-enough-to-protect-roe-v-wade\">settled law<\/a>\u201d doctrine occurred in 2003 when it decided, in\u00a0<em>Lawrence v. Texas<\/em>, to reverse\u00a0<em>Bowers v. Hardwick\u00a0<\/em>(1986), thus invalidating state sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual activity legal.<\/p>\n<p>At the\u00a0Kavanaugh hearings the principle example of\u00a0\u201csettled law\u201d was the Court\u2019s 1973 decision<em>, Roe v. Wade<\/em>, that granted a woman the right to personal privacy with regard to her pregnancy.\u00a0\u00a0In all likelihood,\u00a0Kavanaugh&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/09\/14\/why-stop-at-roe-how-settled-law-can-be-overturned\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo Source Phil Roeder | CC BY 2.0 The Senate hearings on the nomination of\u00a0Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the\u00a0Supreme Court was a political charade. Everyone knows that the fix is in. The Republicans control the Senate and, like the earlier appointment of Neil Gorsuch, will push\u00a0Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination through unless some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-377475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}