The Conservative Justices Know the Only Supreme Court Rule That Matters

[In It to Win It]

“Five votes can do anything around here.”

Whenever one of William Brennan’s law clerks would come to his chambers to vent about a Supreme Court decision they found unconscionable, the justice would simply remind them how arithmetic works. As Nan Hentoff recounted in a New Yorker profile of Brennan, the staunch liberal who stepped down in 1990 at age 84: “Brennan holds up his hand, wriggles his five fingers, and says, ‘Five votes. Five votes can do anything around here.’”

Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would have missed the last live rendition of this “Rule of Five” speech; both of them clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy from 1991 to 1992, a year after Brennan’s retirement. But the Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overrules Roe v. Wade and ends five decades of constitutional protections for the right to abortion care, makes clear that they absorbed this lesson anyway.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion, spills plenty of ink to explain the intellectual underpinnings of his decision. The dissent strains just as diligently to explain why it is wrong. All of it is jurisprudential dressing on an easy counting exercise: A 6-3 conservative supermajority has more than enough votes to do whatever it wants. Thanks to a tangle of “trigger laws,” pre-Roe abortion bans, and pending legislation to which Dobbs gives the green light, abortion will be illegal in more than a dozen states by Labor Day. In a handful of states with especially ambitious Republican leadership, abortion will be illegal by the time you read this sentence.

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[Fullduplexxx]

1. Only aa long as the congress is grid locked

[ZonkerHarris]

2. expand the court. 4 more Justices. There are 13 District courts. Last time court was expanded

it was from 7 to 9 justices to match the growing judicial districts from 7 to 9.
Then we stalled for decades and decades despite our growing population and districts
Expand the court again.
It's time

[delisen]

3. I prefer not to take that divisive bait on Justice Ginsberg.

We can hang together or we can hang separately.

[Trailrider1951]

6. I know, right? If you have to blame someone, blame Mitch Fucking McTurtle

and NOT Justice Ginsberg.

[delisen]

7. Absolutely. nt

[Lovie777]

4. Apparently the 6 GQP justices don't give a shit about the well being of the Right . ..

They are trying to inflict as much pain and suffering on the left but such also encircles the right as well and more so on them than us.

Look at all the horrible shit going on in the red states. Women are scared and pissed, and most are from the right. Look at how the GQP are treating the women in the red states and on top of it now breathing clean air will be a problem because the GQP justices sided with corporations, same for clean drinking water and foods. Mass shootings will continue and even voting for red states may be obsolete.

Shakes head, the GQP justices don't give a shit.

[usonian]

5. One has to hope that Joe Biden and company can do something very decisive

with all the immense powers granted the executive branch since you know when.

I suspect that Joe Biden is not keen on that idea, and that DNC reads only polls, like the proverbial baseball manager waiting for the printout before signaling in a pitch.

Starting this evening, I'm going to write to whitehouse.gov that the situation is desperate and that extraordinary measures are called for, and that a damn lot of us will support them because extraordinary measures have been used against us and the country itself. And that extreme measures were almost called (you know that Donald Duck was craving to call martial law).

Who will join this effort?

When I have a short draft drafted, I may promote this to a thread.