You know, I think there should be a big penalty and more shame involved for those responsible for enacting legislation that is subsequently ruled to be unconstitutional:
A federal appeals court has ruled that an Indiana abortion law signed by Vice President Mike Pence when he served as the state’s governor is unconstitutional.
The legislation, signed by Pence in March 2016, imposed restrictions on a woman’s ability to seek an abortion, including in cases where the child would be born with a disability.
The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling on the law Thursday. Judge William Bauer wrote in the decision that provisions in the law that bar women from seeking abortions in certain cases “clearly violate” what he described as “well-established Supreme Court precedent, and are therefore, unconstitutional.”
The ruling upholds an earlier federal court decision.
If you break the law, often the result is that you go to prison. Short of that, you usually incur some kind of financial penalty and additional inconveniences. But if you try to break our system of laws by enacting legislation that is itself unlawful, there doesn’t seem to be much accountability for that.
heck we can’t even convict cops of willful murder, unconstitutional laws are pretty far down the list of problems since there’s an actual remedy for them.
Every once and awhile a little justice creeps into this shithole Trump world. Someone tell us why the governor of the once great state of Indiana should decide whether or not a woman can get an abortion?
“well-established Supreme Court precedent, and are therefore, unconstitutional, at least until the United States Supreme Court is packed with enough conservatives to find it constitutional.”
F.I.F.Y.
I’m a fan of “The Walking Dead,” so this story reminds me of the following meme.
You write:
If you extend that idea to not only being responsible for sponsoring and/or enacting unconstitutional legislation…”sponsoring”and “enacting” being fairly nebulous terms in terms of legalese in the first place…but if you extend that idea to the executive branch (say totally supra-constitutional orders of military actions, assassinations and massive illegal surveillance of innocent U.S. citizens, just for starters)…and those concepts were applied to Barack Obama and the Clinton I and II twins, would you be singing the same outraged song?
I think not, myself.
Surprise me.
Prove me wrong.
Please!!!
Later…
AG
What you are really saying is that “…there should be a big penalty and more shame involved for those…” acting in bad faith. But even where that abstract notion is agreed upon, its application typically founders on the determination of intent.
If one stipulates, on the other hand, that intent cannot in the general case be determined and must therefore be deemed immaterial, then you would be advocating punishment and shame for legislators who enacted unconstitutional legislation in good faith — which, perhaps, you are? (I must not assume that you have not thought this through.) But if so, we need more justification than the citation of an egregious example.
Precisely!!!
Thank you…
AG
Well, two things are going on here. First, these endless efforts to restrict abortion rights (even if doomed to defeat) are performance art for the “conservative” movement. Plainly unconstitutional laws are tirelessly enacted by “conservative” Repub legislatures all across middle America and the New Confederacy to placate the Christianist wing of the movement and keep them feeling that “something is being done to save the lambs!” Plus, one never knows if a rightwing-dominated federal appeals court may erroneously uphold a restriction.
Second, the movement always keeps a couple abortion restriction cases simmering in the federal pipeline in hopes that if Ginsburg or Breyer or Kennedy kicks the bucket and is inevitably replaced by another Gorsuch or Alito, “conservatives” will have a ready vehicle by which to reverse Roe/Casey. On does have to plan ahead, a strategy that seems lost on the Dem party.
Of course, these unconstitutional state statutes are vexatious litigation absolutely intended to harass providers of women’s health services. And I am guessing that the successful challengers to these patently unconstitutional laws are receiving their attorneys fees from states like Indiana, whose Christianist ex-Guv sees nothing wrong with throwing a few hundred thousand in taxpayer funds down the litigation rat-hole, as here.
The question is why the media doesn’t ask Pence why he has no regard for the Constitution and why he thinks it fine to waste hundreds of thousands on Christianist performance art? Does he think (as a Christianist politician) that his personal views trump the Constitution? But most likely he won’t be asked a single question on this point by our crackerjack media…
<quote>Does he think (as a Christianist politician) that his personal views trump the Constitution? </quote>
Asked the question, he’d dance and weasel and limbo around a platitudinous answer, but in his shriveled black heart he’d be shouting “YES!”