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< | The Myth of Constitutional Law |
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> | Title |
| | -- By ShianneWilliams - 16 Feb 2023 |
| | Inner thoughts: Game over. |
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< | While I had been right about the holding of San Antonio, my Professor’s question was meant to stump me. He was attempting to show us how incompatible these two decisions were while simultaneously asking me to reconcile them. I had no good answer. |
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> | While I had been right about the holding of San Antonio, my Professor’s question was meant to stump me. He was attempting to show us how incompatible these two decisions were while simultaneously asking me to reconcile them. |
| | Unsurprisingly, one glance at Thurgood Marshall's dissent that was carelessly skipped over on my first read informed me how dire the consequences of this opinion truly were. As Kimberlee Crenshaw so gracefully put it this semester in her critical race theory lecture, "reform and retrenchment." While Brown may have been reformative, San Antonio was the retrenchment waiting to happen.
Dobbs |
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< | Sadly, the right to education was just the tipping point. Not long after San Antonio, we started reading the string of landmark abortion cases. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court told me I had a fundamental right to get an abortion in the first trimester. However, within 24 hours of reading Roe, I was slapped with Dobbs, and the sliver of a right to my body that I thought I had was gone. |
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> | Not long after San Antonio, we started reading the string of landmark abortion cases. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court told me I had a fundamental right to get an abortion in the first trimester. However, within 24 hours of reading Roe, I was slapped with Dobbs, and the sliver of a right to my body that I thought I had was gone. |
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< | Once again, I was forced to reconcile legal opinions that were seemingly contradictory; and, once again, I was left with no choice but to undertake the mental gymnastics required to understand the doctrinal reasons that allowed my rights to be stripped. |
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> | Once again, I was forced to reconcile legal opinions that were seemingly contradictory; and, once again, I was left with no choice but to undertake the mental gymnastics required to understand the doctrinal reasons my rights could be stripped. |
| | Our lecture on Dobbs confirmed once and for all that I had no idea what my rights were. I finally realized that I could only know my rights if the Supreme Court decided to extend the kindness of informing me. And if I thought it could not get worse, the Supreme Court decided that they can declare a fundamental right and then take it back like a child who says something they did not mean. |
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< | What I Learned |
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> | The Last Day |
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< | The first thing I did after realizing my rights were hidden in the minds of the Supreme Court justices was call my parents. Boy, was I ready to tell them how unhelpful their advice had been! The conversation went something along the lines of, "Mom, Dad, I am sorry to inform you that I will never be able to know my rights because some white men decided to make the 9th amendment extremely vague." There was never any google search that could help me. But why? |
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> | The first thing I did after realizing my rights were hidden in the minds of the Supreme Court justices was call my parents. Boy, was I ready to tell them how unhelpful their advice had been. The conversation went something along the lines of, "Mom, Dad, I am sorry to inform you that I will never be able to know my rights because some white men decided to make the 9th amendment extremely vague." There was never any google search that could help me. |
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< | Despite being one of the six required classes in the first year curriculum, Constitutional Law is a myth only to be explained by the number of red leaning justices sitting on the court at the time. While my Professor and I pretended that there were doctrinal justifications for San Antonio and Dobbs, we both knew the truth. Ironically, however, the truth of the matter is not what we spent a semester learning or an acceptable answer for the final exam. |
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> | After a semester of reading legal opinions that left me wanting to tear up our Constitution all together, I was not feeling particularly hopeful about progressive change being in the near future. Consequently, the last question I posed to Professor Greene was simply, “Are you hopeful?” |
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< | The question I posed to my Professor on the final day of class was simply, "Are you hopeful?" His answer was simultaneously honest and heartbreaking. He was not hopeful but also made sure to leave me with several tangible first steps toward progressive change. He urged me to think about all the good state governments can do for protecting fundamental rights, all the people who are still actively fighting for the rights of minorities, and how much time I have in my legal career to make a difference. However, what I could tell he really wanted to say, and did, in not so many words, was that people die all the time. I may not know my rights, but hey, at least now I know. |
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> | In asking that question, what I really wanted was for him to give me hope; and he tried.
He urged me to think about all the good state governments can do for protecting fundamental rights, all the people who are still actively fighting for the rights of minorities, and how much time I have in my legal career to make a difference. However, he was not very convincing.
I'm not sure whether it was the tiredness in his voice or his subtle suggestion, in not so many words, that people die all the time that left me feeling just as hopeless.
[How do I end this on a more positive note given that I do not feel very hopeful about the state of Constitutional Law...?] |
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I think there should be a way to gain more of the promise opened by the first draft. Let's talk it over and see if we can come up with something.
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