[lakecresva]

> Despite AWFUL national and international reporting on the Supreme court, their powers are actually quite limited. Their authority is restricted to interpretation of situations where written federal laws do not already exist.

This is pretty directly refuted by Dobbs. Roe v. Wade was not ambiguous and was a settled matter of constitutional law until the new court decided they didn't like it.

[hartator]

> This is pretty directly refuted by Dobbs. Roe v. Wade was not ambiguous and was a settled matter of constitutional law until the new court decided they didn't like it.

I don’t like the decision here as well for political reasons, but if you read the arguments the Supreme Court is just saying that abortion law is a state issue not a federal one. Which limits the power of the federal government. Which is good.

[krapp]

The part where women have to register their periods and have them tracked and might get arrested if they miss a cycle, or put in jail for buying contraceptives, or for googling the wrong things, or are forced to carry a dead fetus to term - which actually happened because in some states the ban on abortion is absolute, with fifteen states not even having exceptions for rape or incest - is not good. The part where doctors are afraid to perform procedures on pregnant women for fear of committing a felony? Not good. The part where Americans don't seem to care about the actual human cost of rights being taken away as long as it weakens the federal government is not good.

Looking at how Southern states seem to be competing to out-fascist each other right now, devolving everything to states' rights seems like a bad idea. If it were entirely left up to the states, half of them would be hunting gays for sport. Having common standards as a culture enshrined in law and a central government strong enough to protect and enforce those standards also seems good. It's weird that this isn't even up for debate where gun rights are concerned but bodily autonomy, rights to privacy and free speech are all up in the air.

[nradov]

There is no such thing as "settled" constitutional law for the Supreme Court. They are not bound by their own precedents and always have the authority to revisit prior decisions.

I don't like the results of the Dobbs decision either. But the root cause of the problem was always legislative, not judicial. When the legislature fails to make the laws clear, anything that ends up in front of the Supreme Court is going to be a toss-up. Tell your members of Congress to do better.

[lakecresva]

Thanks, this doesn't address what I said at all. What I said is that Dobbs refutes the idea that the Supreme Court's authority is limited to "interpreting situations where federal law does not already exist". There's no question that prior to Dobbs, Roe existed, was not ambiguous, and was the legally operative interpretation of the constitution.