The country would have been much better off with President Kerry

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

more

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Profound Effects of Justice O'Connor's Retirement

Marty Lederman

Back in July 2005, I posted to SCOTUSblog a list of precedents that were the most vulnerable in the wake of Justice O'Connor's retirement. The list is republished below. At the time, I wrote that the most important and most vulnerable of those precedents were in the areas of the Establishment Clause (especially the direct funding cases such as Mitchell v. Helms), affirmative action (and just watch what happens to Grutter later this Term), and abortion, where Stenberg v. Carhart was hanging by a thread. Today, the thread snapped, as a five-Justice majority upheld the federal "partial-birth abortion" prohibition.

In its decision today, the Court effectively overruled Stenberg's "undue burden" test for facial challenges to abortion-restriction statues (see pages 36-37 of the opinion).

(By the way: Justice Thomas in his concurrence suggests that he might have voted to invalidate the statute if a Commerce Clause challenge had been raised. In other words, if the Respondents had raised a Commerce Clause challenge, as well -- something they were wise not to do, not of least of which because statutes governing medical facilities plainly are valid Commerce legislation -- the Court might well have invalidated the statute, even though there would have been no majority of the Court for any particular ground of invalidation (a form of "Tidewater Transfer" disposition). That's not really very important, however, because the practical significance of today's case is not so much the fate of the federal statute itself as the evisceration of the Casey/Carhart undue burden test for facial challenges.)

more

Breaking: Supreme Court Upholds ‘Partial Birth’ Abortion Ban

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld a nationwide ban on “partial birth” abortion, “marking a shift on the high-profile issue and underscoring the impact of President George W. Bush’s two high court appointments.”

<...>

UPDATE IV: The nation’s leading group of professionals providing health care for women, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed this law because the banned procedure is often the best option for women:



more

04/16/2007

Kerry Affirms Support of DC Voting Rights

WASHINGTON D.C. - Today, on Emancipation Day in Washington, DC, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) made the following statement supporting voting rights for residents in the District of Columbia. Senator Kerry has co-sponsored legislation supporting DC voting rights, and currently supports the House bill.

"Those who live in Washington, DC should have the same rights as all other American citizens, period," Senator Kerry said. "They deserve a voice in legislation that impacts their lives, and they deserve the right to elect their representatives. Every American's vote must be counted equally -- regardless of race, wealth, religion, or gender, and the same goes for place of residence. It's unfair and undemocratic to deny DC residents this basic right. I will continue to fight for full voting rights for DC residents and want to commend Mayor Fenty and Congresswoman Holmes Norton for their leadership."

link

04/17/2007

Kerry Says Administration Must Work With Congress to Protect Middle Class Families From AMT

WASHINGTON D.C. - Today, the day millions of Americans tax returns are due to the IRS, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) spoke on the floor of the Senate on the urgent need to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The AMT, which was originally put into effect decades ago to ensure the wealthiest Americans were paying their share of the tax responsibility, now burdens more and more middle class families every year and threatens to affect over 20 million Americans next year.

Earlier this year, Kerry sponsored legislation that will address the AMT for 2007 and repeal the lower tax rates on capital dividends for 2009 and 2010.

more

Supreme Court upholds federal abortion ban

Well, there you go. Conservatives can complain all they want about the president's performance on same-sex marriage and immigration, but the Bush-stacked Supreme Court -- having just announced its decision to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban -- has officially handed them a giant freaking gift. As the New York Times/AP reports, "The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion."

Which is funny, because it does. The 2003 law was been struck down by six separate courts as unconstitutional. It carries no exception for health risks to the mother; it's also said to be worded so vaguely as to cover -- at least in chilling effect -- some of the earliest, most common abortion procedures. The procedure it bans in particular is itself not only rare, but also necessary in some of the most heartbreaking cases. Just ask the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or Gretchen Voss. (By the way, anytime the press lazily calls anything other than the original title of this bill "partial birth abortion," the terrorists win.)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pulled few punches in her scathing dissent. "For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health," she said. The ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away" -- with "flimsy and transparent justifications" -- "at a right declared again and again by this Court." <...>