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THE VIEW FROM HERE -
(1) Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)
(2) Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
(3) Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022)
The common element of each decision is that the Declaration of Independence’s individual inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are not the basis of the law of the land. Instead, voters determine rights. Despite the US Constitution’s Preamble’s stating one its purposes is to “secure the blessings of Liberty,” all three cases abdicate the US Supreme Court’s duty to protect inalienable rights. Instead, an individual’s rights rise and fall on the whims of the voters of the individual states. If the voters decide that the right to liberty does not exist, it evaporates. That is the nature of democracy – voters decide who has rights and who has no rights. In brief, the Union with its inalienable rights is replaced by fifty (50) democracies.
(1) Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)
The 18th Century gave us the horrid Dred Scott Decision which held that Blacks did have the inalienable right to Liberty, and hence, they were property who could be owned by another person. The court said that the Declaration and the US Constitution did not include Black slaves and their descendants as having the inalienable right of Liberty. Thus, Dred Scott had no standing to bring a lawsuit in a federal court. In saying that the Declaration’s inalienable rights did not apply to Blacks, the Court held that they were less than human, and thus, the Declaration could not have included them in all men being “endowed with certain inalienable rights.” This decision guaranteed the Civil War; a nation divided against itself – half free and half slave cannot long endure.
(2) Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Few realize that The Brown Decision was based on Dred Scott philosophy, which had stated, Blacks “ had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.” Following Dred Scott, the Brown Court never accorded Blacks the inalienable right of Liberty. Instead, the court invented the new right of Equality of Outcome. Both the Declaration and the US Constitution respectively had rejected equality as a fundamental right. Equality is an invention of the Brown Court. Rather, one compares the success of Blacks as a group to Whites as a group. When Blacks as a group achieve less under the Separate by Equal Doctrine, the doctrine is unconstitutional. No individual Black person has any inherent right to freedom, but then neither does a White person under Brown when it comes to the Black - White comparison.
As Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) noted, Separate but Equal invades the Liberty of Blacks and of Whites who want to associate with each other. Segregation is the violation of everyone’s inalienable right to Liberty and hence it is unconstitutional. The Brown Court stepped over Harlan’s dissent which asserted Blacks and Whites had inalienable rights to associate. The Brown Court should have issued a brief ruling: “We adopt the dissent in Plessy. Thus, segregation is an unconstitutional violation of the inalienable right of Liberty.” Let that sink in! The Brown Court intentionally denied that Blacks had inalienable rights.
The Brown case gives rise to Wokeism where Blacks as a group must have Equality of Outcome in all areas and wherever Equality is missing, the government has to adjust education, business, and government so that the outcomes between the groups are equitable. The present regime is known as Woke DEI. Thus, Whites, Armenians, Asians, Jews, Hispanics, etc. have to contribute to slavery reparations for Blacks; they must give up their positions in colleges and businesses until the percentage of Blacks is equal to their percentage of the population. Woke DEI calls this “social justice.”
Under Wokeism’s doctrines, individual rights are a trap set by racist Whites to harm Blacks, and thus, the individual right of Liberty must be set aside. The very fact that any group such as Jews, Asians, or Gays perform better than Blacks is ipso facto conclusive proof of White racism which the government must rectify.
(3) Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022)
Like the two prior cases, the Dobbs Decision finds that women have no inalienable right to Life, Liberty or Pursuit of Happiness. Instead, those rights rest solely on the whim of the voters of each state.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives” Dobbs
Disingenuously, Justice Alito referred to the “right to abortion” rather than starting with a woman’s inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Because the words “right to abortion” do not appear in the US Constitution, Justice Alito erases every woman’s inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, all of which are involved in an abortion. As Alito knows, almost none of our civil liberties are set forth verbatim in the Constitution. That is not the function of a Constitution. Its role is to be the supreme law of the land so that any future case, statute, code, or regulation which violates the supreme law is unconstitutional. The US Constitution also does not state, “A woman has the right not to have an abortion.” Thus, under Dobbs if the voters of Kentucky decide that all women over 40 who become pregnant must have abortions, that will be the law.
Roe V. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) Is the Best Decided Case in American Constitutional History
When confronted with a woman’s inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, all of which can be involved with an abortion, Roe did not adopt a rigid, mindless rule based on the plain meaning of a woman’s inalienable right to Liberty. Let’s remember that neither the Declaration nor the US Constitution had conferred Personhood on a fetus. If one were to take a strict constructionist approach to abortion, it’s a non brainer. Because a woman is a person, she had inalienable rights. Because the fetus lacks Personhood, it has no rights. Thus, a woman may abort a fetus whenever she desired. The Roe Court rejected this strict constructionist approach. Rather, the court limited a woman’s right to do as she determined with her body by the non-existent rights of a fetus. That is how Roe v Wade arrived at the trimester solution. The closer a fetus came to being a “person,” the more restrictions on an abortion. The constitutional principle in Roe is similar to the doctrine that free speech does not allow one to shout fire in a crowded theater.
The Supreme Court’s function is to protect inalienable rights, and wise jurists realize that such protection sometimes infringes on the inalienable right. Dobbs, however, destroyed women’s inalienable rights. Like Dred Scott and Brown, Dobbs should be classified as a treasonous decision which is designed to destroy the Republic and the rule of law in favor of 50 states democratically allowing their voters to decide who has which rights. As the two recent Florida abortion decisions show, today there no abortion after 6 weeks, next year, it might be no abortion after 15 weeks, and in ten years, abortion may be mandatory.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected].)
