Ginsburg’s Dissension
The US Supreme Court finally rendered its ruling upon Burwell v. Hobby Lobby yesterday, June 30, 2014. It was a 5-4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby’s owners’ religious freedom.
Justice Ruth Ginsburg, one of the extreme Leftist judges in the SCOTUS penned the dissenting opinion which her three fellow leftist judges concurred with.
As this case dealt with the intersection of for-profit corporations, religious freedom, and management-labor power dynamics, it is neither surprising nor of material interest that the Liberal minority within the SCOTUS dissented from the majority opinion. That is to be expected as those four judges are antipathetic to corporations and religious freedom, at least when the religion in question is Christianity.
What is of interest is the nature and content of Ginsburg’s dissension. Ginsburg’s 35-page scathing screed contained little or no basis in law except in the singular part where she agreed with the Court, was more emotive, irrational fear-mongering than a logical exercise, and utterly ignored almost every salient point of the Court’s decision.
This is, and long has been, Ginsburg’s modus operandi and is why I loath her more than any other SCOTUS judge since Justice Warren. Whenever she pens the majority opinion she makes sure to cover it in the law and by legal precedence, but her dissenting opinions rarely stem from interpretative differences in America’s law. Instead they are emotive pleas and and angry hand-wringing over what the effects of the law might be.
Tags: America | Corporations | Emotions | Freedom | Ginsburg | Law | Leftists | Logic | Personhood | Politics | Religion | RFRA | US Supreme Court
July 1st, 2014 at 10:38 am
I’ve noticed that aside from here(*) none of the liberal reaction seems at all concerned with:
1) was it a good ruling from a legal standpoint? Given our current legal framework of corporate personhood and legal protections for religious exercise, was the ruling legally sound?
2) is it even the government’s place to mandate this sort of thing? Here’s a clue: if implementation is this hairy, maybe we ought to rethink what we legitimately expect out of government regulation.
3) even if everyone were to agree that the result isn’t “fair,†what does that even mean? Realistically, how much do we think we can burden everyone to make things more “fair�
(*)Slate – Alito’s Hobby Lobby argument is stronger than Ginsburg’s.
July 1st, 2014 at 11:19 am
I’ve rarely found that Liberals concern themselves with the law except when the law is to their benefit, Athena.
Then again, I’ve seen too many Americans joyous over Burwell v. Hobby Lobby when they have little reason to be so. Hence, and somewhat serendipitously since it was concurrent with your comment, I posted my take on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.