Audible Thought
  • Blog
  • Blog

"Liberty" The 14th Amendment, and the Supreme Court

7/1/2016

8 Comments

 
The supreme court has largely been able to dictate the direction of the country from the bench. Contrary to common opinion, this is because they know what is in the constitution.

People see the government coming down on one side of a controversial issue, and 99.99% of the time, the people who disagree on emotional or moral grounds with the court will also disagree on constitutional grounds. This is strange. The law of the land is the "Sola scriptura" of the court. These scribbles are not subject to the moral whims of any individual, but in nearly everyone's mind, the two are coextensive and universally compatible.
Picture
Hence, pro-life people always think that Roe V Wade was not based on the constitution, whereas pro-choicers can't imagine reading the constitution any other way. The LGBTQ(etc.) community thinks that the right of a man to marry a man is all but spelled out in the constitution, whereas anyone who opposes gay marriage can't imagine finding any legitimate grounds for the legalization of the practice in the same source. Similarly, LBTQ+ can't fathom the notion that anyone could read the constitution after desegregation and find any grounds for allowing a baker to refuse service to a gay man for his wedding. The list goes on. Pick any decision, and you'll find this born out: people always see what they want to see.

Hey, I totally see why conservatives don't want gay marriage, contraception and abortion legal anywhere. But regardless of what position you take, you must be willing to admit that the arguments of the SCOTUS for these cases are based entirely on the constitution. Roe V Wade was argued mainly from the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Obergefell V Hodges (the big gay marriage decision) was argued mainly from the Equal Protection, (which happens to be the adjacent clause in the 14th). Griswold V Connecticut? Well, that was argued again, through the 14th.

Now your average pro-life and pro-marriage American would stop me right there saying, "Show me where the 14th Amendment uses the word 'abortion' or 'marriage', and then we'll talk about how it doesn't follow from the constitution." This is the sort of person that, when faced with a SCOTUS decision that he doesn't like, will accuse the court of legislating from the bench, or he will accuse the court of adding words to the constitution, of offering dictionary definitions instead of legal applications, et cetera. (Sound familiar?) For example, as the sometimes-rather-annoying-and-grossly-overrated-blogger Matt Walsh so aptly put it, "There isn’t even a pretense of constitutional interpretation anymore." (See this post.) Now I highly doubt that Matt Walsh read the majority opinion, and if he already did, he has serious comprehension issues, because the argument for the decision was all about the constitution. (The syllabus in question is available here, by the way.) Fact is, the 14th amendment makes every liberty whatever into a qualified constitutional right; the 9th guards against thinking that all of the enforceable rights are spelled out in the constitution. It doesn't matter that abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc. aren't explicitly contained in the constitution. They can be protected by the constitution anyways.
Picture
I'll go ahead and give you an oversimplified version of these arguments... The court sees, "[No State shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," they look at an instance and see any liberty (or any situation where they say someone has a "compelling interest") that a person is deprived of without a criminal investigation, and then voila! They've got a legal basis for telling a state that their law is unconstitutional. Let's say someone wants to have an abortion... The abortion is a compelling interest ergo it is also a  liberty, but no liberty can be taken away without due process. Some man wants to marry another man? No problem! Personal autonomy requires that individuals get to marry whomsoever they choose, and personal autonomy is a compelling interest, ergo it also is a liberty and a constitutional right. See how this works?

I'm not going to get into whether the arguments actually follow right now; that's a topic for another day. It is also undeniably true that this amendment was passed in one of the most imprudent and un-American fashions imaginable. America is founded on the principle that everyone should get a say in government, and the notion that no laws should be forced on anyone unless they are represented in the process of making that law. Our ancestors fought for this with principle their lives, and their descendants went and forced their cousins AT GUNPOINT to sign several hurriedly-written and under-staffed amendments to the constitution. In hindsight we can see that, intentional or not, one of these rifle amendments brought the whole governmental structure apart from the country's founding principles. Now rights are decided neither by the people, nor the states. Rights are not individually enforced through amendments to the constitution but through supreme court decisions. Yes indeed, through the due process clause of the 14th amendment, the entirety of the Bill of Rights has become irrelevant.

You'd better believe it. We've got an entirely different sort of government nowadays than we had then. The states had a war between those who overemphasized the federal  aspect of the government (The South) and those who overemphasized the national aspect of the government (The North). The North won, and when their governmental changes were enforced, we were left with a nine-fold national dictatorship. As of that day, the American experiment had failed.

EDIT: At the time of writing this article, I held very different beliefs as regards whether or not abortion, contraception and gay marriage should be legal. I have since "awoken from my dogmatic slumber" and now am am now very much on board with liberty and egalitarianism. The substance of my interpretation of these SCOTUS decisions, however, or as to their significance in regards to the factual change of government structure, has largely remained the same.
8 Comments
Otto Korrkdt
7/1/2016 05:27:39 am

"We were brought into this mess by an amendment..." Sadly, no. We were brought into this mess by denying that the proper purpose of the state is to promote virtue. Does anything that the Constitution gives the Federal government allow it to pass laws based on nature or the principle of the good as such?

Answer that question, then you have a little fun ahead of you as you unravel the hidden mysteries of man who are slaves to "liberty", ushering in an era of tyranny.

Reply
Author
7/1/2016 05:02:26 pm

Thanks for the comment.

This strikes on one of the most fascinating aspects of our initial constitution. The federal government may not have been able to pass laws in order to promote virtue, but the states could. In fact as written, states were initially allowed to have state religions. Of course, this perished after their loss of sovereignty at the end of the civil war... Hence, at the time of Roe V Wade, it was held (to paraphrase one of the judges in the first hearing) that laws against fornication "are certainly constitutional". Note too that judicial precedent was initially based on British Common Law. Insofar as this allowed for passing laws for the sake of virtue, our sovereign states, in their setting out, had this faculty.

This is an interesting site in regards to state religions (Maryland is especially fascinating): http://undergod.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=69

Reply
Author
7/1/2016 05:30:07 pm

And of course, this right of the states was taken away by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Reply
Nicholas Gartonzavesky
7/3/2016 04:03:57 pm

I think that you would do well to add a little more proof, although I tend to agree that the constitution is open to such interpretations. Whether or not they were INTENDED by the writers is a different matter, but it was certainly intended to be a fluid document.

Reply
Author
7/4/2016 09:55:59 pm

Thank you for the comment.

I'm not sure how much argument is required aside from pointing out that the supreme court has consistently ruled in this way. It is very true that, in all likelihood, the authors of this amendment did not intend to allow gay marriage and abortion throughout the states. They also probably did not intend to upset the balance of power; the logical conclusion is that this amendment had unintended consequences.

It is nevertheless true that this amendment, through the interpretation of the supreme court, did in fact allow abortion and gay marriage. Note too that that those who support gay marriage as such unanimously agree with the supreme court's ruling, and those who are opposed to gay marriage are almost unanimously opposed to the supreme court's ruling. Likewise with abortion. This seems to be a very strong sign that Americans agree or disagree with the supreme court based not on what the constitution actually says but with what they want the constitution to say.

A similar argument can be made in regards to Griswold V Connecticut, which overturned the state's anti-contraception laws. In the first arguments the appellate made his case based solely on this clause of the 14th amendment, though it is true that the court made the ruling based on other parts of the constitution through this amendment. On this case, a concurrent opinion from Roe V Wade said the following:

"In Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, the Court held a Connecticut birth control law unconstitutional. In view of what had been so recently said in Skrupa, the Court's opinion in Griswold understandably did its best to avoid reliance on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the ground for decision. Yet the Connecticut law did not violate any provision of the Bill of Rights, nor any other specific provision of the Constitution. [n2] So it was clear [p168] to me then, and it is equally clear to me now, that the Griswold decision can be rationally understood only as a holding that the Connecticut statute substantively invaded the "liberty" that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [n3] As so understood, Griswold stands as one in a long line of pre-Skrupa cases decided under the doctrine of substantive due process, and I now accept it as such."

Reply
Michael O'Hara
3/8/2019 03:48:23 pm

This is a grave article. You obviously have put a lot of thought into it. The implications of this article however are disturbing to the utmost. First of all, how is "compelling inerest" the definition of liberty as a right? If that were so, then 'legally' murder is the right over every individual who has a 'compelling interest' to kill. This however is against the law. Thus, this definition of liberty as a right must be flawed because it includes more that it should. Take the following example. A dog and a cat are both mammals. A doctor developes a treatment that is helps cats. That same treatment kills dogs. He cannot rationally say then that his treatment helps mammals. The doctor has to either hold that both cats and dogs are mammals or say that only cats are mammals. Only if he defines mammals as cats only can he say his treatment is healthly for cats. In a similar way if liberty was defined as the right to act on 'compelling interest' it would include the 'right' to take a life and the right to have a life. But the right to take a life is not a right at all because murder is legally and morally wrong. So either it must be held that murder is a right and therefore protected by law or the definition must change. In this case, murder is against the law, so the defintion must change.

Secondly, yes SCOTUS made abortion legal. But it cannot be constitutional if it refuses protection of an innocent idividual to the right to life. What did an unborn child incapable of haming a fly do to its mother that legally merit the death penaty? "[No State shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". What due process of law can condemn a person who is unequvically incapable of breaking it? Yes SCOTUS made abortion legal. But this is the taking of a life from a person that is has just as much right to life as the mother that bears it. Making abortion legal was a mistake not just morally but legally.

Reply
Author
3/9/2019 12:30:58 am

Thank you for the comment.

It is worth pointing out that your argument relies both on the premise that human fetuses are persons and that the right to life includes the right to use someone else's body to live. Both points are highly contentious. Roe V Wade spent a good deal of time addressing the former point. Thompson's A Defense of Abortion is all about the latter. Casey V Planned Parenthood offers an outline of the history of substantive due process, which concept your question also touched upon.

Reply
Michael OHara
3/9/2019 07:28:56 am

While it is true that the question of whether a fetus is a person or not is a point of political contention the argument you are employing and the Row-vs-Wade decision is now being used to kill live born late term failed abortions. See

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/abortion-protection-debate-what-is-born-alive-fetus/

Under Law a human person is a born member of the numan species. That legal definiton is debatable. However it does show that Roe V Wade is being used to legalize murder.

That said, there is also the question of what is a person. If there is no such thing as a human soul the we must default to the scientific or legal definition of a person. The legal definitoin of a person includes the clause born. That makes any live born fetus a person. However, if you use the scientific definition of a human person you get "a member of the species homo sapiens, the human species." The fetus has human DNA. So if there is no such thing as a soul, then a person is any member of the species homo sapiens. And to be a member you must be independant. The fetus has its own heartbeat at 24 days. So any fetus after 24 days is an independant member of the species homo sapiens. So sceintifically it is a person after 24 days. And if it is live born after 24 days it is a person legally.

As to why this is a wide debate, it is a question of greed not rights. The abortion idustry is huge and funds a lot of political base. It is the industry of disecting human remains and selling them to the highest bidder which is illegal. Currently the FBI and the Center for Medical Progress are both investigating this issue and CMP has brought new evidence to light. So why is abortion such a big issue? Because there is a big profit in it.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/30/new-evidence-suggests-planned-parenthood-lied-congress-aborted-baby-part-profits/

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.