Tag: Abortion

June 1, 2020

The Supreme Court Is About to Make Seismic Rulings on Reproductive Rights

The rights of women to terminate their pregnancies and to receive free contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are on the chopping block. Those challenges to reproductive freedom are consistent with Trump’s agenda of pandering to the religious right while erasing Barack Obama’s achievements. The Supreme Court will rule on these cases during the… Read more »

October 15, 2019

Civil Rights Are on the Chopping Block in New Supreme Court Term

This term, the Supreme Court will decide whether people can be fired for being transgender or LGBQ, if people brought to the U.S. as children can be deported, whether states can impose restrictions on abortion that disproportionately harm poor women, how firm the separation between church and state is, the scope of the Second Amendment… Read more »

March 23, 2017

Gorsuch Would Use “Originalism” to Affirm Right-Wing Agenda

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch says he’s an “originalist.” The late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch called “a lion of the law,” also championed originalism. Justice Clarence Thomas now stands alone on the high court as a self-proclaimed originalist. Largely discredited by courts and legal scholars, originalism is ultimately a way to reach a right-wing… Read more »

February 3, 2017

Trump’s Choice of Gorsuch Endangers Civil, Human and Environmental Rights

As promised, President Trump has nominated to the Supreme Court a judge in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Neil Gorsuch, like Scalia, is an “originalist,” who interprets the Constitution the way he thinks the founders intended and a “textualist,” who favors the plain meaning of statutes and the Constitution. Gorsuch is a… Read more »

January 15, 2017

Smooth-Talking Jeff Sessions Can’t Hide Disturbing Record

Although Jeff Sessions’ confirmation as attorney general of the United States by the GOP-controlled Senate is a foregone conclusion, it is still important to analyze his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, which shed a troubling light on his positions. In his responses to the senators’ questions, Sessions loudly protested the idea that he has ever embraced… Read more »

October 22, 2016

The Threat of a Right-Wing Supreme Court: Analyzing Trump’s Prospective Justices

As the media focuses on Donald Trump’s sexually predatory behavior and Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches, the future of the Supreme Court has received only an occasional mention. During the final presidential debate, the topic was finally given some attention. When asked about late-term abortion, Clinton said Roe v. Wade “very clearly sets out that there can… Read more »

February 18, 2016

How Scalia’s Absence Will Affect Pending Supreme Court Cases

The death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia raises a number of questions: What will be Scalia’s legacy? What will happen to the cases pending in the Supreme Court? Will President Obama successfully fill Scalia’s seat on the high court? And how will Scalia’s death affect the 2016 presidential election? Scalia’s Record on the… Read more »

November 13, 2012

Make Obama Do It

By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer President Obama declared in his victory address on election night, “Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated . . . We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened… Read more »

December 5, 2008

Obama: Ratify the Women’s Convention Soon

Nearly 30 years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States remains the only democracy that refuses to ratify the most significant treaty guaranteeing gender equality. One hundred eighty-five countries, including over 90 percent of members of the United Nations, have ratified… Read more »