SCOTUS Wishes

Scott Lemieux has a brief post over at The American Prospect about the nominees we might see in an ideal world to fill the Supreme Court seat of soon-to-retire Justice John Paul Stevens. Any progressive who's been awake for the past few months has likely already accepted that whoever the nominee is, he or she would not be our own first choice (or second or third for that matter, sadly enough). Obama has been, shall we say, letting us down somewhat lately.

But hope springs eternal, no? I know very little about most of the names being tossed around (with the exception of Ezra Klein's awesome fucking suggestion), but Lemieux is partial to Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, and after reading up on her and watching this, I'm inclined to agree:



Her focus on the tone and the terminology that the Court used (and I'm not certain which decision she's discussing here, though it sounds like it could be this one from April 2007 regarding late-term abortion) is extremely important and not often present in public commentary on how we talk about abortion. As she says:

"...the decision is written in a tone in which the pregnant woman is referred to almost entirely as "the mother", although these women have made the decision that they do not want to be mothers now. The fetus is always referred to as "the unborn child". The doctors are not referred to as "physicians" but as "abortionists"..."

I'm very pleased that she recognizes the fault with this phrasing, because it clearly sets up the anti-choice argument as being the right one, the default one. Women are "mothers", fetuses are "children", doctors who perform abortions are nothing more than that. It comes from the conservative standpoint which is heavily influenced by opinion, whereas the liberal standpoint is much more objective - pregnant women are pregnant women, fetuses are fetuses, and doctors are doctors. It's not a radical view, it's a rational view. It's a view that doesn't look through a lens of personal opinion but rather just assesses the facts. We need a lot more of this in the discourse, on abortion and many other topics, and Karlan has a handle on that.

Of course, she's also gay, so the GOP would lose their shit if she were the nominee - because anyone who isn't white (or far-right non-white), hetero, male (or non-feminist female), and Jesus-following would be nothing but a wild and crazy ACTIVIST JUDGE BOOGA BOOGA. In RWNJ world, a member of a marginalized group is incapable of any aims other than destroying and subjugating the oppressive classes. As flattered as I am that they think us so ambitious and mighty, I'm also seriously sick and fucking tired of the ludicrous idea that those who've had so much power for so long are ever on the verge of losing it all because someone else manages to capture a shred of their own.