Glenn Melancon/Contributing writer
Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has fought her way past big government conservatives. She is on her way to confirmation to sit on the highest court in America. Her story is a story of America.
As conservative Senators questioned her, both inside and outside the committee room, they revealed how far back they are willing to take America. They revealed their contempt for Modern America.
To understand the conservative judicial philosophy, it helps to remember their first big loss in Modern American History: Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Senators and Representatives issued what they called the “Southern Manifesto.”
“We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.”
Fast forward to 2022; Senators used this same rhetoric to attack Judge Jackson.
For example, Senator Mike Braun (IN) claimed in interview that Judge Jackson would legislate from the bench and trample on States’ Rights.
When the interviewer pressed Sen. Braun for a specific example from the past he evaded until the interviewer asked about Loving v. Virginia (1967). He chastised the Loving case because it outlawed state bans on interracial marriage and freed individuals to marry the person they choose.
Later Braun retreated from this extraordinary statement, but at the time he held firm. He claimed, “It’s the beauty of the system, and that’s where the differences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves.”
Senator Marsha Blackburn (TN) used the hearing to call into question Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Griswold established that a woman has a Right to Privacy in her doctor’s office. Connecticut had restricted Estelle Griswold access to birth control pills. She sued and won.
The Supreme Court ruled that women, not the states, had the power to make health issues. States had to demonstrate that birth control pills caused harm in order to regulate them. Until states could prove harm, society had to trust women to make this choice.
All of these questions, however, danced around the big question. Should state governments or women make decisions about reproduction? In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Court ruled that states could not interfere in the early stages of pregnancy but could in the final stages.
Conservative senators want to take America back. They want to give states more power and limit the freedom of adults. American voters have to decide if they want to grow government again.