Amy Coney Barrett and the Meaning of Free Will

 

 

People speak of Amy Coney Barrett as if she were a Buick being chosen and driven off a dealership parking lot. She’s been identified, selected, and put on the road to the Supreme Court. But there’s an enormous flaw in this reasoning: she’s neither an inanimate object, nor a pawn. She is being chosen—presumably—for her stature as a jurist. A conservative jurist, to be sure. But still, a sentient being, an intelligent jurist who understands the significance of her nomination in this time and place. She must also understand what her nomination would mean to the legitimacy of the Court in these contentious times.

 

Today’s nomination stinks of rank partisanship, anti-democratic court-packing, and the danger of utterly destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court for decades—if not forever. If she is seen as a convenient place marker—an inanimate object—who can be relied on to rubber stamp the President as the winner of a contested election, Coney Barrett will be the destruction of the Court and of her own stature as a credible jurist.

 

Coney Barrett is only 45, with plenty of time to be considered for a seat on the Court in the future. The best thing she could do now—for the reputation of the Supreme Court, and for her own place in history—is to decline the nomination. And she should do so publicly and loudly, with a clear statement that three weeks before the election is not the time to rush through a nominee.

Medical Care and the Constitution (Yes, I can bleed you. It’ll cost you a chicken.)

18th century high-tech equipment

In answer to the burning question of whether the mandate to contract for medical care is constitutional or not…. Let me answer with another question: did the original Constitution—written in the late 18^th century—anticipate massive and influential medical and pharmaceutical industries? I don’t think so. At the time medical care amounted to bleeding and poultices. 

State-of-the-art medical care

No antibiotics, no cancer medications or treatments. No x-rays, CT scans, MRI’s or blood tests. Precious little surgery. No maintenance drugs for high cholesterol and blood pressure, psychological issues and a thousand other chronic medical conditions. No hospitals or rehab facilities. The local surgeon (who doubled as a barber) was paid for his services with a chicken or two. There was no such thing as catastrophic medical care that would take you to the poorhouse. Infections killed you, childbirth gone-wrong killed you and the baby, and most people didn’t live long enough to suffer from the diseases of old age. So the founding fathers could not have foreseen the commercial juggernaut into which the medical industry would grow two centuries later. And trying to shoehorn today’s healthcare business into the simple medical paradigm of the 1780’s… well, it makes no sense. The logic seems to be that if the founding fathers didn’t address it, then we won’t either. By this exquisite logic, slavery and child labor would still be legal.

Lady Justice is blind. Not stupid.

As for the Supreme Court—secure in the safety of their own guaranteed, life-long medical coverage—and having the nerve to spout obviously partisan questions about the political policy of the healthcare mandate…. Scalia’s and Roberts’ partisanship is not even thinly veiled. I’m speechless. In this century the court has twice proven that it is not above partisan politics (Bush v. Gore and the more recent—and quite crazy—ruling that PACS and corporations are people), and it looks like they may head down the same path this time. So much for the Court’s impartiality: Judicial activism in the name of conservatism is still activism.