Supreme Court of US, Roe v. Wade Really confused by this Supreme Court decision: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033048958/supreme-court-upholds-new-texas-abortion-law-for-now Quote from the article. &quot;It said the abortion providers didn't properly address &quot;complex and novel antecedent procedural questions&quot; in their case.&quot; So my question is... doesn't this open the door for states to pass any law whatsoever? For example, what if a state wanted to bring back slavery. Would the Supreme Court again ignore the issue because of &quot;procedural questions&quot;? I mean... is this something specific to abortion law, or to any law whatsoever?
No The case was dismissed on procedural reasons. Like this. Well, perhaps not so pedantic but there are things that have to happen before the Supreme Court can get involved and they haven’t. For example, the Supreme Court only has original jurisdiction in a limited classes of case; if this isn’t one of those (and it isn’t) it has to be heard in a court that does and then get appealed up the chain. When they have, the court will make a decision on the merits.
Probably not, because there is no legal case or controversy, and the law is clear enough. In US v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, SCOTUS held that A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution The opinion has a long analysis of the &quot;subject to jurisdiction&quot; clause, reasoning that this excludes only children of diplomats, who are not subject to US law. Harris's parents were not immune diplomats so she was never immune to US jurisdiction. They are never forced to take any case, and are especially not likely to take a case so lacking in legal merits.
The Constitution does not state your opinion of SCOTUS's job, instead it just says that there shall be one supreme court with judicial power, and it says what kind of cases are within the jurisdiction of that court. Thus The Constitution does not mandate whether rulings will adhere to the doctrine of stare decisis, will be based only on a narrowly literal interpretation of The Constitution, or will be based on a general sense of justice. The Constitution also does not say anything about the rules of that Supreme Court, therefore the court is free to set its own rules, and to allow or to not allow amicus briefs. Many points raised in amicus briefs fall on deaf ears, sometimes because they are based on non-shared legal assumptions. You can read a very brief summary of the over 140 amicus briefs in this case here. If you read various SCOTUS opinions over the past 225+ years, you will see that the court does make reference to fact, not just statements of the law and constitution. This brings it well within the scope of &quot;potentially relevant&quot; to determine some fact. The lawyers get to argue how facts relate to legal conclusions, but the basic fodder for any legal decision is some set of facts. The specific briefs you mentioned are: Pro-Life Obstetricians and College of Obstetricians. The latter's argument is self-summarized as Amici’s position is that laws regulating abortion should be evidence-based, supported by a valid medical or scientific justification, and designed to improve—not harm—women’s health Pro-Life Obsetricians' position is self-summarized as support for a law that rationally furthers Mississippi’s interest in protecting women’s health from risks posed by later- term abortions, which are now well established in the literature These statements refer to interpretive doctrines previously established by SCOTUS, but not literally expressed in The Constitution. In US v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 introduced concepts of constitutionality (not literally stated in The Constitution) whereby cases could be reviewed either with &quot;strict scrutiny&quot; for protection of Constitutional rights or else discernment of a &quot;rational interest&quot; in government taking a certain action. Either of these kinds of judicial review require a comparison of law to &quot;the facts&quot;. Hence &quot;the facts&quot; can be legally relevant.
I found the case in an episode of Amicus (podcast). Mark Joseph Stern was on the show and Dahlia Lithwick referred to an article he had written about the subject. Here is a quote from the article: In the 1990s, Thomas disapproved of race-conscious redistricting designed to empower black Democrats; today, he objects to race-conscious redistricting designed to empower white Republicans. In the 1990s, all the conservative justices voted to not allow taking race in to account to create solidly black districts. All the liberals said that it would be ok. Now (in Cooper v. Harris) all the liberals are saying it is not ok to take race in to account when destroying Democratic districts through gerrymandering and the all the conservatives said it would be ok, save Clarence Thomas, who remained consistent with the previous ruling, giving the liberal justices a victory.
This is an opinion question, even if it doesn't seem like one. The life work of many professors is trying to explain the current system of review. One theory that is fairly well accepted relates to the concept of deference to other political actors. To understand this theory, we need to begin by recognizes that the Court is not unilaterally adjudicating political rights; it is one of many actors that all have some stake in making Constitutional decisions. The Court recognizes this, even if it also demands that it get last word on whether or not it gets last word. In footnote four of Caroline Products the Court laid the foundation for the modern equal protection doctrine. That text embraced a constitutional scheme whereby rights are given judicial protection primarily if they are unlikely to be given political protection by the other branches of government. Under this scheme, we care about groups that are politically weak or political distant from those with power. This equal protection jurisprudence is an example of deferential thinking; we trust the political branches generally unless there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of the political process. The deferential thinking approach to constitutional law holds that we do the same for many other area of Constitutional law. A given enumerated right is only Scrutinized strictly by the courts if the courts don't trust the other political actors (States, Legislature and Executive), to adequately protect that right. As I said, that is a theory. Not everyone agrees that this is what is going on or that this is what should be going on. Moreover, many enumerated rights are protected under a very strict level of review. Strict review and "strict scrutiny" are similar ideas, with the latter being a term of art and the former being a reasonable description of how much attention courts will pay to protecting a given right.
Constitution of the USA, Article IV, Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. and the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, clause 3): [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; SCOTUS has found the former to mean that states that do not allow same-sex marriages in their laws must recognize same-sex marriages registered by other states - Obergefell v. Hodges. Maybe one could argue that driver licenses are not equivalent among states, but I would expect judges (SCOTUS) to require a very well reasoned explanation. For example, maybe Alaska could refuse to recognize licenses from Florida because Florida drivers do not know how to cope with snowed roads. But even in that case Alaska probably would need to produce data showing that these measures aim to serve the public interest (avoid accidents) and that there are no other ways of getting the same result. OTOH the Commerce Clause has been successfully used to avoid states mandating racial segregation of travellers, so it is quite reasonable to see it being used to prevent a state from trying to limit the mobility of citizens from other states (again, in the supposition that the state restricting it cannot show a compelling reason to do so). AFAIK, only the Federal Government could invoke the Commerce Clause; I would expect a lot more people (in your example, the PA government or maybe even any PA driver) would have standing.
Yes. In some common law jurisdictions, such as Canada, the United Kingdom and even some U.S. states, the government may under some circumstances refer a legal question to the appropriate Supreme Court (Privy Council in the U.K.) for an advisory opinion. These opinions are non-binding, but have large influence because they are often made by the same judges that would otherwise end up dealing with the question should it occur in a case. One common law country in particular stands out in this field: Ireland. Under Article 26 of the Irish Constitution the President may, with some exceptions, refer a bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. The referral is optional, but once made, the Supreme Court's decision is binding. The relevant portion: 3 1° In every case in which the Supreme Court decides that any provision of a Bill the subject of a reference to the Supreme Court under this Article is repugnant to this Constitution or to any provision thereof, the President shall decline to sign such Bill. [...] 3° In every other case the President shall sign the Bill as soon as may be after the date on which the decision of the Supreme Court shall have been pronounced. This power was last used successfully in 2004.
No The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Any courts the Congress creates are, by definition, inferior. Of course, Congress can overrule a SCOTUS decision by passing a law to that effect,unless the decision defines a right under the Constitution. So they couldn’t overturn Roe but they could overturn Dobbs. It’s largely the gutlessness of Congress in grappling with controversial issues that has put SCOTUS in the position of lawmaker.