Sunday, July 05, 2015

My op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader: "Introducing Our New Ruling Elite"

My newest op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader:
In his dissent in last week's Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision prohibiting states from defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman, Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that every member of the Supreme Court was a graduate of Yale or Harvard law schools. This is, he said, "hardly a cross-section of America" ...
Read more here.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

But overall, this is still a conservative court; 4 liberals, 4 conservatives, and a swing vote which is usually conservative.
And almost everything written here about same sex marriage as legislation applies just as equally to saying that corporations are persons. So it goes both ways. Why then do some people complain about one ruling but not the other? What small minority feels the same about both decisions?

j a higginbotham

Singring said...

Well, if you took a cross section of America, the majority would favour same sex marriage according to all recent polling. So what's your (or Scalit's) point exactly?

Singring said...

Sorry... Scalia

Anonymous said...

The point was probably that this change should have been enacted via the Legislature. Which does mean that it is Constitutional. Which also probably just means that he is unhappy with the decision.
Scalia did not mention that (i think) 6 of the 9 are Catholics. It is definitely not a diverse group. I wonder if Scalia cares enough that he would resign if Obama promised to pick a non-Ivy league law school Midwesterner as a replacement. HaHa.
And I am old enough to dislike the use of "elite" as a pejorative term.
j a higginbotham

Anonymous said...

Oops, 'does not mean it is Constitutional'

jah

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

If that were the case, they wouldn't have needed judges to do their work for them. They could have done what conservatives did and gotten bills passed by elected lawmakers. The fact that they had a hard time doing that is an indication of how accurate their polling was.

But why engage in democracy at all if you can do it so much more easily by creating an oligarchy?

Anonymous said...

Get back to work, Singring. Don't you have some Greeks to take care of?