Why would medical opinions be relevant in a court case regarding Roe v. Wade? Both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists submitted amicus briefs in the Dobbs case that resulted in the Supreme Court overturning the Roe v. Wade decision this week. What could be the relevance of opinions by these organizations? I believe (based on interviews I heard from their representatives today) they argued based on the medical impacts of unwanted pregnancies and abortions on the women involved. But SCOTUS's job isn't to decide whether a law is a good idea or bad, just whether it's constitutional. There's nothing in the Constitution that prohibits laws with adverse medical effects (except for prisoners, who are protected from cruel and unusual punishment); some might even argue that the 2nd Amendment prohibits gun control laws that would make people safer (this same week SCOTUS ruled that New Yorks' concealed carry law was unconstitutional). Roe was decided based primarily on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment; the Dobbs decision maintains that this interpretation was mistaken (&quot;eggregiously wrong&quot; is the phrase used in the opinion). Since the 14th Amendment doesn't say anything about medical issues, what difference does this make?
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.
The first thing to note is that your question is kind of the wrong way around. US states are sovereign and generally have the ability to make any kind of laws they want, unless they violate some specific tenet of federal law or the US Constitution. You suggest, for instance, that arguments which are "culturally founded" have no place in the law, but that's just your opinion, and there isn't generally anything preventing a state from making law based on such things, should its elected legislature see fit to do so. (Indeed, one could argue that nearly all laws are in some sense "culturally founded", since they are based on some notion of what kind of behavior is or is not appropriate, and those tend to be culturally based.) So legally speaking, the states aren't, by default, obligated to give any sort of justification for the laws they made. The burden of proof is on the other side. Someone seeking to overturn those laws would have to convince a court that the laws violated some specific provision of the Constitution (or another superior law). If they couldn't convince a court of this, the law would stand. From what I have read, before the US Supreme Court's 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the previous precedent was set in 1971 by the Minnesota Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson. The decision itself is quite short and is worthwhile to read. Quoting Wikipedia's summary, the plaintiffs claimed that Minnesota's restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated several provisions of the US Constitution: First Amendment (freedom of speech and of association), Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment), Ninth Amendment (unenumerated right to privacy), and Fourteenth Amendment (fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause and sex discrimination contrary to the Equal Protection Clause). The Minnesota court determined that none of the plaintiffs' objections were valid. Again, I'll refer you to the decision for the details, but the court mainly focused on their Fourteenth Amendment arguments (the others may have been addressed by the trial court, whose opinion I can't find online). They wrote: The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, like the due process clause, is not offended by the state's classification of persons authorized to marry. There is no irrational or invidious discrimination. They specifically rejected any analogy to bans on interracial marriage, which had been held unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia: But in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex. Baker appealed to the US Supreme Court, but his appeal was dismissed "for want of a substantial federal question," without any further explanation. (Nobody quite seems to understand what they meant by that, but here is an essay discussing the situation in a little more depth.) The effect of the dismissal was that the Minnesota court's decision became binding precedent upon the whole nation - laws against same-sex marriage didn't violate those provisions of the Constitution. And that was how matters stood for 44 years until Obergefell. (Of course, there was nothing to stop individual states from deciding to allow same-sex marriage, and some in fact did so in the meantime.) You have suggested that laws against same-sex marriage were religiously motivated. This might suggest an argument that they would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The plaintiffs in Baker didn't raise that point, so it wasn't considered in the Minnesota court's opinion. I don't know whether any other courts have considered it; no such argument was mentioned in the opinion in Obergefell.
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 US Supreme Court has made some decisions that legal scholars, other judges, lawyers, and people in general have strongly criticized as mistaken, but none anywhere nearly as wild as the one suggested in the question. Many such, well let me call them &quot;disputed&quot;, rulings have been later overturned by the court itself. A well known example is Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), which was overruled a few years later by West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). Many of the so-called Lochner era economic decisions were also eventually overturned by the Court itself. Some disputed holdings have been altered by changes in the law, State or Federal. Some have been overturned via a constitutional amendment, such as Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833), which is now held to have been overruled by the Fourteenth Amendment, although the Court did not come to that conclusion until early in the 20th century. Perhaps the most notorious case is Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857) which held that a person of African descent could never become a US citizen, and that Congress was without power to prohibit slavery in any US state or territory. This is perhaps the most denounced decision of the US Supreme Court in its history (See the linked Wikipedia article for a few such comments.) This decision was undone de facto by the outcome of the US Civil War, and de jure by the adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Some cases have later been treated as &quot;bad law&quot; even though not formally overturned. An example is Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), in which the Supreme Court upheld the removal of US citizens of Japanese ancestry from the US Pacific coast during WWII, and their confinement in what has been described as a series of concentration camps. This has not been formally overruled, but in Trump v. Hawaii No. 17-965, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), Chief Justice Roberts wrote: The dissent's reference to Korematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious: Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—'has no place in law under the Constitution.' 323 U. S., at 248 (Jackson, J., dissenting). [quoting Jackson's dissent in Korematsu] And some cases, although much disputed, still stand as good law. The case of Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258 (1972), holding that Baseball continued to be exempt from anti-trust laws, federal and state, has been much criticized, but remains in force to this day. (See the section &quot;Subsequent jurisprudence&quot; in the linked Wikipedia article) Congress has not, so far, acted to limit the exemption, as the opinion indicates that it had the power to do. In short, a US Supreme Court decision, however &quot;erroneous&quot; or &quot;absurd&quot; commentators or the public may consider it, remains the law of the land until it is overturned or distinguished by the court, or made obsolete by changes in statute or in the Constitution itself. It the highly unlikely situation described in the question, John Doe would remain in prison until his sentence expired or he received a pardon.
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.
US Constitutional law generally recognizes the right of freedom of movement, e.g. in Corfield v. Coryell, 6 Fed. Cas. 546, Crandall v. Nevada, 73 U.S. 35, Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168. The more recent case Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 affirms the position that restricting the "right to travel violates the Equal Protection Clause absent a compelling governmental interest", and one of the specific rights subsumed under the right to travel is "the right to enter and leave another State". The "compelling governmental interest" is a reference to standard of judicial review known as strict scrutiny, where a law that restricts a fundamental right (the right to travel) is required for a "compelling state interest", is "narrowly tailored" to that purpose, and is the "least restrictive means". It is highly likely that each state has a statute that grants broad powers to the governor in case of a state of emergency. Such an order would then have to be scrutinized strictly, with respect to the narrow tailoring and least restrictive aspects of the question. We would then have to analyze the specifics of the case and order.
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.
In this case the Plaintiff, James Maloney, has previously been charged with a crime for possession of nunchucks. He is apparently suing to enjoin further enforcement of the law under which he was previously charged. US Federal courts will only take up a "case or controversy", which means an issue where actual, not theoretical rights are at stake, and in order to vindicate a constitutional right, it must either have previously been violated, or there must be a plausible and immediate threat to it. Claiming that a law is unconstitutional as part of a defense to a charge of violating that law is a common and probably the best known method of challenging a law (or a government action) for unconstitutionality. But there are other ways. One way is to apply for an injunction against enforcement of the law. That is the procedure that was followed in, for example, the recent case where there was a ruling against the ADA in a district court. In order to use that procedure, the plaintiff must present evidence that there is a credible threat that the law will be invoked against him (or her) if the action which the plaintiff claims is protected by a constitutional right is taken. In short, one need not put oneself in a position where one goes to prison or is found guilty of a crime if one loses the case to challenge the constitutionality of a law or of a government policy or action. But one must establish that it is a real "case or controversy", with real parties in opposition to each other, and real rights at stake, not a mere law student's exercise, nor a collusive case, with both "sides" having the same actual goal. In the case reported, the previous criminal charge helps to establish that this is a real issue.