UPDATE: Video below. It's worse, but not for the reasons you think. Joe Biden answers the same questions right before her, and the difference is, frankly, enraging. I hear a lot about disrespect of Palin by the liberal media. But Palin's entire participation in this process has been an exercise in disrespect for government and the presidency. Some would argue that is, at the end of the day, what conservatism is--that if you hate government, you'll be bad at talking about it. I don't go that far. But this whole episode reminds me of listening to Wynton Marsalis talk shit about rap, and then recording that awful rap single. He sounded about as good rhyming, as I would playing the sax, or as Sarah Palin sounds auditioning for VP. What a disgrace.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
(sorry if this is a double post)
Its not that she doesn't know the answers, its that she can't even put together coherent SENTENCES.
She draws blanks under the lightest pressure...
Any other cases other than Roe vs Wade? BLANK
What media do you read? BLANK
As awful as I think she is, I believe she reads *something* and she must know Brown vs BOE... right?
"Better to say nothing and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
-Samuel Clemens
I love how her answer is based on the premise that the ABSOLUTE WORST thing the Supreme Court can do is infringe on an issue best decided on the "sate level." Dred Scott, anybody?Plessy v. Ferguson?Also, by her logic(such as it is), I guess Brown v. Board is an historic tragedy since, really, couldn't the states have sorted that out?
Also:pairing her answers side by side with Biden's as they did on the newscasts was downright cruel....
I'm speechless. This woman can't even answer basic questions about US legal history; hell, she can't even name US paper publications. This is sad on so many levels that I'm not even sure I can bear to watch tomorrow night's debate. I can picture her brain leaking out the side of her ears when she's asked a question or pressed by Biden.
Let's be fair about this. Palin couldn't answer the question of which cases she disagrees with. So she must agree with all of them, save for Roe v Wade. Now, how one agrees with both Plessy and Brown v. Board is another matter.
With her rambling on local decision-making, I don't think it's actually clear if she would have opposed the Plessy decision.
Couric: Can you think of one that rhymes with "Med Mott"? How about "Messy vs. Murgeson"?
Couric: Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?
Palin: I do. Yeah, I do.
That's not the answer her base wanted to hear. Inherent privacy--meaning not spelled out as such anywhere in the text--is the foundation stone on which the Roe v. Wade ruling depends.
Frankly, this shocks me more than most things.
I'd been assuming that she hadn't spent time on science, economics, foreign affairs, or things military, but she had spent time on core concerns and touchstones of cultural conservatives.
I assumed she might accidentally offend a Putin or a Sarkozy, but she'd know how to mind her p's and q's around a Dobson or a Reed. She'd know which buttons not to push.
From the militant pro-life perspective, I think she just pushed one of the biggest, reddest, most explosive buttons around.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4493093n
Also, Dred Scott and Plessy wouldn't have been good answers. Couric was clearly looking for recent decisions that remain good law today, not cases from the distant past. An obvious choice would've been Boumediene; she personally has derided Obama's support of that decision.
how do we know that she knows absolutely nothing about the supreme court and legal matters?
when couric asks her if she believes in an inherent right of privacy in the constitution, she's too friggin stupid to know that that right of privacy is the legal basis for the roe v wade decision.
if one accepts the right of privacy in the constitution, one accepts the basis for the roe v wade decision.
what an idiot.
she obviously simply learns talking points and recites them at what she imagines is the appropriate time.
no understanding, no awareness, nothing, other than a recognition that now is the time to start reciting her talking point on a particular subject.
she is exactly what she appears to be: a beauty pageant contestant with an interest in politics.
sporcupine and frankie d make excellent points regarding the right to privacy...
if one accepts the right of privacy in the constitution, one accepts the basis for the roe v wade decision.
what an idiot.
No, no, you're the idiot. In the first place, a right to privacy need not extend so far as abortion. You could plausibly argue (as many people have) that banning the use of contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut) or banning gay sex (Lawrence v. Texas) is a violation of a right to privacy, but banning abortion is not. Second, even if abortion falls under the right-of-privacy umbrella, it does not follow that Roe is good law. We have a right to free speech, but some restrictions of speech are constitutional because the purpose of these restrictions is a compelling one. Basic constitutional law. If the Court had found that 1st and 2nd trimester fetal rights were a compelling state interest, then abortion bans would be constitutional. Instead, they ruled that the state only has a compelling interest in protecting 3rd trimester fetal life. So there's no inconsistency in her position - though of course, you're right that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Wow. Biden looks so good in comparison to Palin it almost makes you think he was fed the questions in advance. With so much Palin video these days, you forget what a fluent answer sounds like.
There's another Joel? I second the Twain quote, however.
I believe that a new case may soon come before the court: McCain and Palin v The Intelligence of the American People. Should be quite the controversy....
@asher - you're right that it's not nonsense to believe in both a constitutional right to privacy *and* that that right doesn't extend as far as to protect abortion or abortion using the trimester basis that Roe rested on.
What is complete nonsense however is to claim that one believes that there's a federal constitutional individual right/liberty that "individual states can best handle" deciding the contours or extent of. This is utterly incoherent and reveals that she doesn't understand the whole point of a federal right is protection against majoritarian restriction of that right.
Asher,
I agree that one could see a right to privacy and still oppose Roe.
One couldn't see a right to privacy and be as hard-core as the firmest conservatives want on saying the Constitution is a fixed text.
One can't know one's way around cultural conservative concerns and not know that was explosive.
And, now that I go that far, I'll add that for those very people, Scott v. Sanford is another touchstone. They read it as the Court having denied someone's personhood and sacred worth, having been desperately wrong, having been wrong enough that precedent has to be reversed, having been so wrong that it worth a civil war. They see it as just like Roe in all those ways. And Sarah Palin doesn't know that part, either.
sorry asher, but you muddy the crucial issue by getting into the weeds: without a recognized right of privacy, there is no griswold decision and without griswold, there is certainly no roe v wade decision.
the argument you present is the argument that one would offer in a brief arguing various aspects of abortion decisions. and decisions in a wide range of other types of cases. you are attempting to do what lawyers do. which is fine, but something i recognize easily.
again, without a recognized right of privacy, griswold and wade are decided differently.
or so rightwing legal scholars would have us believe.
OK, let's give her the benefit of a very large doubt and say that she would defend Griswold (right to privacy covers the right to contraception), but not Roe.
The problem is that the rest of her answer: "And I believe that individual states can best handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in an issue like that." That's just complete gibberish having nothing to do with the Supremacy Clause or the 14th Amendment.
Let me second that it is really tough for any non-lawyer to follow Biden, who has been on the Senate Judiciary Committee for at least two decades, and gone through multiple Supreme Court confirmation hearings. But come on, that answer is still pretty atrocious for anyone aspiring to fill a federal constitutional office (POTUS, VP, Cabinet, Congress, eg).
Sure, frankie, if you say there's no right to privacy, you kill Roe, but there are more subtle ways to refute Roe that aren't as politically unsavory. Denouncing Griswold was how Bork lost in his confirmation hearings. It's politically nuts to come out against any sort of right to privacy. So I don't really see your point.
If one my philosophy undergrads turned in writing that was anywhere near incoherent as that they would not make it out alive.
She was actually semi-coherent on the 1st question - enough to get by, I think, when seen by the vast majority of the watching public. Not as good as Joe Biden, but acceptable.
But anyone, I think, can see the difference between the 2nd question (any other decision by SC you disagree with?), and how Biden and Couric answered it.
There was NOTHING there. She had no frame of reference, and tried to cover it by spouting talking points. Obvious unpreparedness.
What is complete nonsense however is to claim that one believes that there's a federal constitutional individual right/liberty that "individual states can best handle" deciding the contours or extent of. This is utterly incoherent and reveals that she doesn't understand the whole point of a federal right is protection against majoritarian restriction of that right.
But I thought you just conceded that it's an acceptable position to say that the right to privacy doesn't extend to abortion. So, assuming arguendo that it doesn't, states wouldn't be deciding the contours or extent of a federal constitutional right when they regulate abortion. Or, suppose that the Court said, "we can't gainsay whether or not protecting fetal life is a compelling state interest - that would require us wading into moral/ethical waters in which we don't belong, so our position is simply that if a state asserts, after going through its deliberative and democratic process, that fetal life is a compelling state interest for them, we'll accept that and uphold their abortion regulations, even though they conflict with liberty interests." Is that an incoherent position?
asher,
roe obviously sits on griswold's shoulders.
griswold established, as best i can remember from my con law classes, the principle regarding privacy rights that led directly to roe.
while it may be politically unpalatable to actually denounce the privacy rights established by griswold, the leap from griswold to roe is not very large at all, and many, many conservative legal scholars lump them together.
no one wants to be the kind of neandarthal who would ban contraception, but because of the connection between the two cases, it's entirely possible that such a ban could happen, if one rejects roe v wade.
anyway, i'm in the middle of cooking and howlingfangtods and sporcupine have explained this far more elegantly than i have.
this also reminds me of the "bush doctrine" controversy when many palin supporters attributed some type of sophisticated knowledge of the doctrine's nuances to palin and explained that she could not answer the question because there were just too many versions of the doctrine.
i'm proceeding on the entirely justified assumption that her knowledge of constitutional law is not so nuanced that she would go through the type of analysis you provided.
Wonder when Pallin discovered that she's "in that sense, a federalist." I suspect that she's learned about federalism (as viewed by the Federalist Society, anyway) in the last week or so.
It goes without saying that virtually every commenter in this thread knows more about Supreme Court decisions and U.S law in general than a potential vice president.
God help us.
Oh, come on. Surely you can find someone to bash in the context of Sara Palin comparisons more deserving than Wynton Marsalis. Wynton Marsalis is, among other things, the premiere music educator of his generation - with no peer in introducing broad audiences to great music since Leonard Bernstein. You may not like or agree with his commentary on rap, but it's not borne out of total ignorance of the terrain like Palin's answers here.
What makes your analogy doubly inappropriate is that it's too easy to find a flamingly ignorant, self-serving, high-on-blind-ambition, Republican-values piece of crap in the rap world who really does operate at her near-infantile, incoherent level of Palin when interviewed out-of-their-depth. I read an interview with one such character recently, but don't care enough to google up his name.
That was a cheap and pretty crappy shot.
Arghhh! I started yelling Kelo! Kelo! Kelo! at my monitor -- It's a recent decision (no need to know any actual history or anything), should be of interest to local government types, and is something an alleged conservative should be able to work up some frothy indignation over -- although maybe Alaskans like that one ...
It is possible to oppose Roe while supporting a privacy right. It is also possible to oppose using the 14th amendment to impose any but the narrowest of rights. It requires a good number of legal contortions to do both of the above at once, but I won't call it impossible.
The problem is that Gov. Palin did not express a view about the law. She babbled about the law in such a way as to make little to no sense whatsoever.
For reference, some recent(ish) landmark decisions most conservatives have railed against.
Lawrence v. Texas
Miranda v. Arizona
Kelo v. New London
Boumediene v. Bush
Kennedy v. Louisiana
Biden may have sounded boring and obtouse, but even an uninformed listener would think "I don't get that, but he sounds smart saying it." She sounded dumb. Even if you don't have any legal training, you can recognize that she should be able to talk about these things without sounding...stupid.
Discussing any one of them would have made her seem at least on the same playing field as Biden, though still getting crushed.
When the answers from Biden and Palin were played side by side the difference was profound. Biden displayed intellect and logical thought and Palin just babbled.
She may be a wonderful person but I don't want her having the power to make vital decisions over the economy or national security. She is not qualified and John McCain showed poor judgement to pick her.
Hey Asher,
What law school do you attend? And how's your first year going?
It's like you opened up a Constitutional Law textbook, and just picked out phrases, without actually analyzing their meaning.
The holding in Roe v. Wade is premised upon the Right of Privacy, recognized in Griswold, as one of the Penumbras of liberty enshrined in the 14th Amendment.
Now, if you want to argue that Roe is a bad decision, you attack it on the grounds, that the express "right to liberty" found in the 14th Amendment - specifically "nor shall any State deprive any person of . . . liberty . . . without due process of law . . . ." - does not go so far as to imply and thus recognize a Constitutionally protected zone of privacy, so as to allow individuals to determine in private, whether or not to form a family, procreate, have children free of government intrusion.
In Griswold, the court held, that married couples cannot be prohibited from purchasing contraceptives, since the decision on whether or not to procreate is a private matter, that is Constitutionally protected from state intervention absent a compelling governmental interest.
Once you recognize the Right to Privacy, you give away the whole caboodle.
Everything else that Asher wrote is just fancy sounding bullshit. Referencing cases to sound smart. But to people who actually know this stuff, you just sound stupid.
Everyone is focusing on her inability to not name another Supreme Court Case (besides Roe), which certainly reveals her ignorance, but what is most revealing is that she contradicts herself in her argument against Roe. In one breath she says she's opposed to Roe but in the next she says she believes that implicit in the Constitution is the right to privacy, which is the basis of Roe. What fuckin' sense that make? NONE!
Do you get the feeling that with each successive Palin disaster video, Doug Feith pumps his fist with a smidge more vigor?
It's politically nuts to come out against any sort of right to privacy.
Yet the wingnut right continues to rail against it - because (despite the 9th Amendment) it is not specifically enumerated in the constitution ("inventing rights!").
Palin clearly dropped the ball here because denouncing Griswald is the dog whistle for her supposed constituency.
As someone mentioned, virtually anyone in this comment thread has a better handle on US constitutional law than Palin. Her answer to why Roe v. Wade is bad law does nothing to address the merits of the case. If a constitutional right exists - as was found in Roe - then it ought to apply to all, and can't be left to the individual states to infringe on these rights. So Palin leaves unexplained how Roe is wrongly decided; instead she does expresses her dislike for the outcome.
Ergo she also disagrees with Bush v. Gore. Obviously.
My apologies to Asher, I didn't read all your posts. You were just making the argument. My bad.
As for Palin:
If she wanted to give a shout out to the base, she should've said she disagreed with Dred Scott. Dred Scott is a coded pro-life case.
In that case, the court ruled, that a living human being - a slave - was not entitled to rights and protection of the law and the consitution and that slaves were essentially property.
Pro-life advocates argue that we're treating fetuses like slaves, and that we should treat the fetuses like humans with rights and privliges and all that, just as what was eventually done with (former) slaves.
I just realized that Joe Biden has been answering these questions with excellent, thoughtful, presidential responses that show how much he has thought about these subjects, and that he draws on a wide, deep base of knowledge when formulating his opinions on them. And he doesn't get YouTubed at all, can't even get on page 6.
I'm sad.
nattyb,
thanks. you said what i've been struggling to say.
again, i doubt that palin has any real views on any of those issues.
she's just regurgitating rehearsed lines.
what's especially ridiculous is that she says she finds a fundamental right to privacy in our constitution, oblivious to the fact that opposition to the right to privacy is the cornerstone of pro-life efforts to undermine roe v. wade.
what more can even be said about her at this point?
josh marshall over at tpm picked up on this issue. he has a great, succinct explanation as to why her statement was so dumb.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/221281.php
I was thinking the same thing about Bush v. Gore. I wish Couric would have asked her about it.
Once you recognize the Right to Privacy, you give away the whole caboodle.
No, you don't. See no less an authority than John Hart Ely, Yale L.J. 82, 920 (reprinted at http://www.timothypcarney.com/wages-wolf.htm). A 'Right to Privacy,' so far as it goes, means nothing. You can coherently draw the line at the bedroom - contraception and all manners of sex protected, abortion not. As Ely points out, in Griswold the Court was pretty explicit that the sanctity of the marital bedroom is what was at issue. You could draw a much more inclusive line and say that not only is abortion protected, all sorts of 'private' lifestyle choices like, say, smoking pot are protected too. Just saying that there's some sort of implicit right to privacy in the Constitution gets you nowhere. But moreover, even if abortion falls under the privacy right, there's still the question of whether the state has a compelling interest in protecting fetal life. In Roe, the Court said that there was a compelling interest in protecting third trimester fetal life, and so regulation of third trimester abortion was allowed. They didn't say, that's where the right stops - they said, that's where the right is outweighed by other interests. Now, if you believe that there's a compelling interest in protecting fetal life from conception on, it's perfectly coherent to argue that abortion bans implicate a constitutional right to privacy, while still being constitutional.
And yeah, she should've mentioned Kelo.
i can't help but laugh, but i needed to ask this, anyway...
asher,
now, be honest...
do you really, truly think that sarah palin answered that couric question with that type of analysis in mind?
The Constitutional right to privacy was invented in order to outlaw state limits on the sale of contraceptives, where there was no serious problem in going across state lines to get them. It was a mistake, both legally (where do we get this?) and politically, because it affected negatively the states' ability to present various solutions to the regulation of sex and its aftermath. I think Palin is right on this (and wrong on the right to privacy).
Had the question of abortion been left to the states, the extreme right would have had a harder time taking over the Republican party and getting hold of conservative Democrats for Republican presidential candidates. Some states would have banned it (probably allowing it in cases where the pregnancy threatened the life of the motherO) and some states, in varying degrees, would have allowed it. Slowly the consensus Biden was talking about would have been reached and most states would end up allowing abortions in some or many situations beyond saving the mother's life.
We wouldn't have to listen to nonsense about eight-cell blobs being human beings with the full and unquestionable right to life no matter what!
@Sporcupine:
You wrote:
"From the militant pro-life perspective, I think she just pushed one of the biggest, reddest, most explosive buttons around."
Biggest, reddest, most explosive buttons around? I'm literally LAUGHING OUT LOOUD.
To be fair, there are only two major, widely known Supreme Court rulings that are safe to disagree with, and those are Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. In every other famous case I know of where some people disagree with the ruling, you're getting yourself into a minefield. And it's potentially dangerous for Palin to say she doesn't disagree with any other SC rulings, because everyone will jump on how she forgot about Plessy and Dred. She sure as hell isn't going to say she disagrees with Kelo even if she did know what it was -- who knows what business interests she'd alienate?
Some thoughts as a non-lawyer:
1. The first rumors before this came out suggested that she couldn't name any cases besides Roe, which was horrible: my wife (also non-lawyer) and I came up with a dozen in a few minutes.
2. Reading the transcript before watching the clip, I had more sympathy for her-- the question is for her to dissect a Supreme Court case, to back up her opinion with some decent reasoning. The commonly known cases that jumped to my mind as matching her criteria of state precedence over federal were Brown and Lawrence, where there's not political upside in bashing the decisions (assuming she's still supposed to appeal to independents-- perhaps a big if). No excuse: Boumediene was tailor-made for that question for her. (I think it's fair to keep it to this century-- I'm sure everyone would be groaning if all she could come up with were Plessy or Dred Scott.)
3. Is there any doubt that Biden would pwn her in this regard? He's a lawyer with decades of experience in these types of issues. Of course he sounds better. (Of course, if he was on her "turf," which is apparently energy, I think he would've acquitted himself much better than she did here.)
4. Who was the last non-lawyer without federal experience to become P or VP before W? Reagan? I guess he probably would have had a better answer in 1980 to this question, but I don't really know if the substance would've been there. He definitely would have sounded more articulate. Would W have been better on this in 2000? Probably but not necessarily.
5. Tomorrow is going to be a total frickin train wreck.
I just think it's fun watching Sarah Palin self-destruct. Do you think there will be anything left of her on Election Day?
"do you really, truly think that sarah palin answered that couric question with that type of analysis in mind?"
Of course not! She's an idiot. But I do think that it has more or less become the conservative party line to pay lip service to a constitutional privacy right, while still objecting to Roe. Roberts said he supported Griswold in his hearings (while being much vaguer on abortion), and so did Alito. So I think she has her talking points right, though she surely doesn't understand the analysis behind them.
There is some unaired footage of Sarah Palin answering a question about Hamas. This is the only place I could find it and its definitely a must see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsTLQ612F-A
If things keep going the way they are, sooner or later we shall learn that reporters are forbidden to ask Palin about the weather - it might be a gotcha question, after all.
It's so utterly and devastating clear that Palin simply has no clue about what matters or why in terms of governing the USA. Unfortunately, it's equally clear that McCain has no guiding principles beyond self-aggrandizement and immediate gratification of his ego. What an appalling combination of ignorance and self-interest the two of them have achieved!
One reason that Palin might well have remembered Heller, indeed, given her background should have done, was the reaction of the political leaders of the State of Montana to the prospect of Heller losing. Remember what they were saying and why?
I'm with frankie d on this one. Getting into the weeds on this one is as beside the point as trying to figure out if your dog is belching at you in morse code, in French. Maybe Palin had a talking point she didn't understand (I doubt it -- as a Republican talking point, "there is a right to privacy" is too counter-intuitive), maybe she was just winging it again.
Doesn't matter. It matters that she's clueless here. Again.
Hold up, hold up. This clip was being billed damn near everywhere as "Palin can't name a Supreme Court case." The conveniently omitted modifier (omitted by CBS or whoever, I don't know) is "that she disagrees with." What's she going to do, tell people she's not cool with Miranda v. Arizona or Gore v. Bush? Look, I'm liberal as fuck, but I think the billing for this was a fundamental (McCain and Palin love that word) mischaracterizing of what actually happened.
Now don't get me wrong, she really should have said Plessy v. Ferguson, or at the very least said "you know what, none spring to mind right now, we've had a great tradition of Constitutionalists in the Supreme Court and I'll uphold that tradition," but let's not continue this farce of Palin not knowing a single SC case. I think that her actual record of spoken incompetence speaks well enough for itself. Stay fair here.
@Adam:
Or the Exxon Valdez one from this summer--she issued a statement that she disagreed with the decision in July.
Or the one granting Guantanamo detainees Habeus Corpus--she mocked that in her convention speech.
I don't care if she knows the x v. y name--I don't. But for all the conservatives who repeat "appointing 2 or more Supreme Court justices" as the one reason to vote this ticket, here is someone who thinks the right to privacy exists and can be interpreted as allowing the states to limit or ban abortion beyond Roe v Wade--surely they can't be happy with that? She'd try to help and nominate someone ass backwards to her stated beliefs.
Adam hits the nail on the head. She could have easily punted on Supreme Court cases; instead, she sounded like a dolt. I wonder what sequence the interview was done in. Once she blew up on one portion of it, I'm sure it destroyed her confidence for the rest and exacerbated some of these answers. Not that she's knowledgeable, but jeez, it seems like a town dog catcher can dodge questions better. Just say you don't know and no one will care!
asher,
okay, i get that.
and i agree. conservative jurists are now giving lip service to griswold's right of privacy language, while scheming to undermine it completely. that is clearly their strategy.
and i cringe everytime i read language from a recent opinion by roberts or one of his ilk that references that right of privacy, because it sounds absolutely insincere. just dicta they have to write to maintain the illusion.
however, i don't quite believe that palin has it on the ball enough to fall in line with the current strategy of paying lip service to griswold, while seeking to undermine it - and its progeny - all the while.
maybe she is that sophisticated. i don't think so.
also, it appears to me that griswold is solidly in the sights of this supreme court. while it may seem incredible to contemplate, i think that there would be 4 votes to overturn griswold, today, if the issue was brought before this court. it would be a backdoor way of attacking roe v wade.
I kinda like the Wynton Marsailis analogy. Except...Wynton has done some good stuff (Standard Time series, Jelly Roll Morton album), and has real talent. And when he does something stupid (haven't heard the rap, but can't even imagine; his extended compositions are a snooze), he embarasses only himself, and OK, maybe Stanley Crouch.
This woman makes me ashamed to be an American. Seriously.
@Adam:
CBS didn't bill this in a misleading way and all other billings were based on leaked information a McCain campaign aide. The relevance of the billing minimal and misses the crux of the issue, which is her inability to discuss the Supreme Court in any capacity. Indeed, she failed to even outline a coherent legal philosophy. And as Deborah notes, Palin has in the past publicly come out against Supreme Court rulings. To not be able to recall doing so -- to not be able to recall her own purported positions -- raises even further the specter of her as nothing more than a mouthpiece (and a poor one at that). In this regard her emptiness reflects nicely the emptiness of the McCain candidacy.
@ Other Joel
There are two of us.
Asher = Palin,
Please tell me. Cooley? Nova Southeastern School of Law?
What Palin and Asher share is a propensity to spout off (conservative-legalese)talking points, without really knowing what they mean.
hmmmm, so you say the right to privacy, so far as it goes, means nothing.
I'd have to disagree. I'd say, "if the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Wait, that's not my opinion, that's actually Justice Brennan in Eisenstadt v. Baird, at 453.
umm yah, whether to bear or beget a child would seem to be included in the right to have an abortion, at least in the 1st trimester, free of government intrusion. The Court in Roe, held that the state has a compelling interest in the 3rd trimester b/c the fetus could live outside of the mother at that time. Palin opposes the morning after pill, which would prevent conception well before viability. I have no idea where you get smoking pot as a "private" lifestyle choice that would be consistent with Griswold and her progeny. Although Clarence Thomas has your back on smoking the reefer. Raich v. Gonzalez,"In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana."
"also, it appears to me that griswold is solidly in the sights of this supreme court. while it may seem incredible to contemplate, i think that there would be 4 votes to overturn griswold, today, if the issue was brought before this court. it would be a backdoor way of attacking roe v wade."
I think only Thomas and Scalia would vote that way. Moreover, I can't imagine a state wacky enough to ban contraception. Connecticut's law dated back to 1879 and was never enforced; Planned Parenthood had to cook up a test case to get it into court.
To the commenter who said Palin makes you embarrassed to be an American, and Wynton Marsalis isn't all that bad, I ahve to say: Wynton Marsalis kind of makes me ashamed to be an American. Really, Sarah Palin is a flash in the pan; 4 years from now nobody'll even know who she is. Whereas, Wynton Marsalis has pretty much besmirched jazz for all eternity.
"Wynton Marsalis has pretty much besmirched jazz for all eternity."
Actually, Creed Taylor took care of that long before Wynton emerged on the scene. While not much of an originator, as a "curator" Marsalis rescued jazz from total bullshit.
Deborah-- right on! I thought of Exxon Valdez right away. She would be safe there-- it's her turf.
Asher- We're all impressed that you have a set of case law books in your home library. Please stop now. It is not interesting at all.
nattyb- nice simplification for us non-lawyers. Now pls stop yanking Asher's chain. It takes one person to start up a (boring) argument, but two to prolong it ad nauseum. pls exchange emails and bore each other on your own time.
Wynton Marsalis is as boring a musician as Asher is a dinner date.
{Couric: Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?
Palin: I do. Yeah, I do.
That's not the answer her base wanted to hear. Inherent privacy--meaning not spelled out as such anywhere in the text--is the foundation stone on which the Roe v. Wade ruling depends.
From the militant pro-life perspective, I think she just pushed one of the biggest, reddest, most explosive buttons around.}
No, they will realize she is a rambling, empty-suit, just as the rest of us do.
All of you guys suggesting she mention Kelo: Palin would probably get creamed for that, since as mayor, she tried (and failed) to seize the land for her legacy sports arena through eminent domain.
"if the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Wait, that's not my opinion, that's actually Justice Brennan in Eisenstadt v. Baird, at 453.
A reasonable opinion on Brennan's part, but just an opinion. People who derive the right to privacy from the Fourth Amendment might draw the line around the home rather than around matters "fundamentally affecting a person." Which is an awfully vacuous notion if you think about it. A whole lot of things fundamentally affect people. But conceding that abortion does fall under an implicit privacy right, I still think it's very easy to argue that Roe was wrong, simply on the basis that protecting fetal life is a compelling state interest. My problem with Roe is that, when you get down to it, it really turned on the majority's personal opinions of the value of fetal life. There isn't really any neutral principle you can use to adjudicate whether fetal life is compelling or not - it's not like the debate over diversity in Grutter, where experts could offer testimony as to the benefits of diversity in higher education. Life is an end in itself, so it's all a matter of what value you choose to place on it. The Court said that fetal life only becomes compelling at the point of viability, but they don't deduce that from anything - that was just their personal view. There's absolutely no support for it in the opinion. Now, there have been some arguments made that fetal life isn't a compelling state interest because, if it were, the states that banned abortion would take it much more seriously and not provide exceptions in case of rape or incest. The exceptions, and the general tendency to not provide criminal penalties for women who abort in abortion bans, bely, so the argument goes, the claim that fetal life is a compelling purpose. (Jack Balkin, Yale Law School, Original Meaning and Constitutional Redemption, downloadable free of charge at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=987060.) That's a respectable argument, but not quite a compelling one.
"In Roe, the Court said that there was a compelling interest in protecting third trimester fetal life, and so regulation of third trimester abortion was allowed."
Which is why Obama's claims about voting against born alive legislation (that it could have undermined Roe) bugs me. We need rational compromise from both sides.
Let's make this easy, shall we? Sarah Palin, the next time someone asks you which other SC cases you disagree with, say "Planned Parenthood vs. Casey". It's the last word (and the current law) on the issue you care so much about.
This "culture of life" line that she worked into her answer is really the heart of the pro-life argument. It actually has some merit, too, but of course these anti-abortion die-hards just strap on blinders and forget or forgive every other failing of the party that's been pandering to them on this one issue. Even though I personally agree (as I think most people actually do) that abortion is generally best avoided, I would rather trust someone like Biden - a pragmatic but real Catholic - to make the best of the situation on this issue and not lose sight of the many, many, many other things that our executive leadership has to worry about.
By the way, the "right to privacy" issue is one where the framers of our constitution clearly did not anticipate the invasions of modern life. Not that we have to argue about their intent on that point, since their intent is meaningless (they are all dead). Thankfully, rather, the constitution as written was robust enough to handle what its writers couldn't foresee - by constitutional amendment.
The bottom line is that we would not be in this position if our current congressmen and women would pass an amendment containing only the most basic negative rights to privacy that all reasonable people would agree every free human being is entitled to.
They could then put to rest all this tired argument about whether abortion is a matter of privacy by passing a federal law regulating abortion. Whether this law codifies Planned Parenthood v. Casey or not, it would be preferable to the current stupid culture war by making people's rights clear and imune from judicial lawmaking.
I came in here linking from the Atlantic.com front page, and all I saw was the title "Palin on the Supreme Court." And I thought, that's all we need, is her serving on the Supreme Court.
And then I actually clicked through to the article. But I want you to know that you probably took a year off of my life with that title....
I only came in here to stick up for Wynton - hating on him is somewhat like focusing all your rage at Bush - it's easy, but it's also a copout.
I definitely don't agree with some of his views but at this point in my life I also don't really care - I think that he has made a contribution.
And when you think about it - getting angry at Palin - all it does is make you lose focus - the problem with her for me is strictly the issues. Turning Palin into an effigy to burn has the potential to make a mockery of understanding the issues and the opinions and feelings of citizens who have differing opinions than your own.
Seasleepy, aside from total crackpots nobody has a problem with eminent domain for public development like a road or Palin's sports arena. Kelo was about using eminent domain to benefit private developers, which is a horse of a totally different color.
I was almost shouting Kelo at the screen too, because most everyone right or left disagrees with it.
I keep hearing that she has no interest in politics. How can one have no interest in politics and be governor of Alaska. Don't you have to follow what goes on in the Nation such as what passes, fail etc? I just don't get it. How did she get elected governor?
I really playing dumb here. She's jerking Couric's chain.The look on her face says I can't believe I am being asked this question so I will fuck with this woman.
I'm not a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but it appears that Palin's opposition to Roe is based on the states rights (federalist) argument. But it seem that once you accept the right to privacy, the federalist defense becomes moot and another line of attack needs to be against Roe. It seems to confirm that Palin is once again using talking points that she does really doesn't understand.
I know everyone keeps saying that Dredd or Plessy would have been cop-outs becuase Couric was looking for a recent case, but I have a different take.
If Palin were really savvy, and quick on her feet, she would have said something to the effect of, "Well, Katie, I think that both Dredd Scott and Plessy demonstrate that the Supreme Court can make serious errors in judgement. Over time, both of those cases came to be seen as an embarrassment to the Court and to America. I believe that in 10 years, Roe may be viewed the same way."
That's how you spin, baby.
I can't believe that she used the word Federalist properly.
A few thoughts:
Contrary to what many on this thread believe, it is perfectly reasonable and consistent to think that the Constitution protects a right to privacy while also maintaining that the right to privacy does not encompass a right to obtain an abortion. Brennan's line in Baird doesn't automatically bring us to Roe, or shouldn't anyway, because contraception and abortion are obviously different things. In the first, there is no fetus for a state to have any compelling interest in protecting, and in the second, there is.
Secondly, why isn't Buck v. Bell in the same category as Plessy and Dred? Is it because the progressives were on the wrong side of that one?
Thirdly, anyone who thinks Biden came off smoothly must not have been reading the same transcript I'm reading. Let's put aside the fact that there is no liberty clause in the Fourteenth Amendment (this guy went to law school?!?), his defense of Roe is pathetic. Not only does he mischaracterize what it did, he suggests that it represents the consensus position of the country! Ah yes, that must be why abortion is not at the heart of the legal and culture wars in this country. Oh wait...
He actually thinks that a ruling that struck down the democratically-elected laws of all fifty states in this country was an exercise in consensus. That is much dumber than anything Palin said on the issue. Of course, Palin has been a disaster on virtually every other issue...
Sarah Palin is criminally incompetent and needs to withdrew from this race ASAP. She's a joke and a fraud.
McCain disgraced the Constitution and his miltary service by choosing Palin to be his running mate.
Palin is an insult to the intelligence of every rational thinking, sane voter.