The anticipated awful decision would be one upholding the lower Federal Circuit Court's opinion regarding the Louisiana Unsafe Abortion Protection Act. That law requires doctors who perform abortions to have hospital privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where any abortion they perform is located.
It's actually pretty difficult to see why this statute would be regarded as unconstitutional and I doubt that it is. The lower Federal courts didn't think it was. The thesis is that the requirement places an undue burden on women seeking abortions as that will, presumably, limit the number of doctors who perform them. That may have been the intent of the law, but the lower court didn't buy it. I doubt the Supreme Court will either.
To listen to the commentary on the statute, however, you would think that it struck down Roe v. Wade, which it most definitely did not. That hasn't kept abortion advocates from acting as if that's what will be decided by the Court, which is unlikely, and that's why Schumer was out campaigning, which is really what he was doing.
Schumer stated to the crowd, as reported by legal blogger Amy Howe, the following:
I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind. And you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisionsSchumer apparently didn't know what was going to hit him.
Schumer's comments were stupid. He should have known better, but Schumer is another example of a Harvard educated lawyer who evaded the practice of law. He graduated from Harvard in 1974 and passed the very difficult New York bar in 1975 (it typically has over a 50% failure rate), but he was elected to the New York Assembly in 1974 and has been a politician ever since.
As prior posts here demonstrate, I have a problem with those who secure an Ivy League legal education and don't practice. The Ivy League has an outsized reputation for its law schools, but part of their real legacy is lawyers who don't practice. I guess you can't force a person who graduated law school to practice, but there's something that's simply not right about that.
One of the things that isn't right is that the person in that situation has an academic legal education but no idea of how things are in the real legal world. One of those things that Schumer should have known is that threatening a judge is contempt of court.
In that context, Schumer got off easy. As Howe reported:
In a statement released by the Supreme Court this afternoon, Roberts – without repeating the names of the justices who were the target of Schumer’s wrath – criticized Schumer’s remarks. “Justices know,” Roberts declared, “that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.” Roberts concluded: “All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”Rebukes by Supreme Court justices are rare, but this is the second time Roberts has made one. The Press has reported this as "only the second time" but most Chief Justices never issue a rebuke. The first time came when President Trump referred to a Judge as "an Obama judge", which also drew Robert's disapproval.
On this occasion Roberts would have been within his rights to have cited Schumer for contempt of court. Of course that would have been extreme and have brought rebuke itself. Schumer has attempted to walk back his statements, but more than anything else they serve to bring to mind the question as to why the two most senior members of the Democratic Party in Congress are such fixtures and if they really aren't well past their prime.
Roberts is correct. The Court will do its job. And in reality, this particular case isn't anything near being what the Press keeps suggesting it is, no matter what a person's opinion on it may be.
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