Forgive me if I don’t exactly agree with the last sentence in your analysis. The rest of it is pretty solid, though. You might be surprised to know that most conservatives want exactly what you describe to happen. Then we’ll actually be able to have a productive debate on the matter of abortion and there’s a very good chance that real people (as opposed to activists on either side who have a financial stake in the outcome of the debate) will manage to come to agreement on abortion’s sub-issues like personhood and rights vs responsibilities and will agree to legislation with wihch we can all live.

I don’t know that such a scenario is a recipe for Democratic election victories, though, any more than it’s a recipe for Republican victories.

Scalia turns positively red when talking about homosexuality, for example. His flaring temper betrays his real motive: queers disgust him.

One big clue is outside the text of his opinions: his questions, and also his demeanor, at oral argument. In Jacobson v. US, for just one example, the Court was considering an entrapment claim by a defendant who had been caught ordering child pornography. The guy had ordered photos of teens before the legal limit was 18, and the postal inspector kept sending him advertising until he finally ordered some child porn. At argument, one attorney (prosecution’s appellate counsel, I believe) mentioned that Jacobson was bisexual. Another justice said, “well, how is that relevant to whether he was predisposed to violate the law?” Scalia chimed in with, IIRC, “doesn’t it show that he’s a deviant? That he has rejected society’s sexual norms?” These quotes are approximate — it was a 1992 case, and I don’t have a ready free source for the transcript. (Some of you law school folks may have free access.)

(BTW, Scalia dissented in Jacobson, which held that, even if someone is predisposed to do an act, if that act then becomes illegal, to overcome an entrapment defense by predisposition the prosecution must show that the defendant was predisposed to break the law. Think alcohol here — if prohibition were reinstated, mere history of drinking would not be enough to prove a predisposition to violate the new Volstead act. Instead, the prosecutor would have to prove a predisposition to break the law to drink. In that regard, a history of pot smoking would be more relevant than a history of drinking pre-ban alcohol.)

the Civil War was fought to keep the Union together, not to end slavery. Keep in mind that slavery was legal in several of the United States and that the Emancipation Procalmation only applied to CSA territory under Union control – slaves in Confederate-held land and the Union weren’t freed.

True only in a very narrow sense. This was the political compromise necessary to get the war fought — but the Union was only in danger because of slavery. The irreconsilable conflict pressed slave and free states to seek more of their own, to tip the balance in their favor in the Senate. Without slavery, a middleground between the North and South would have emerged. Slavery was binary, and created a faultline. The limitation on emancipation lasted only as long as necessary to keep the border states on board — the first Reconstruction Amendment ended slavery everywhere in the U.S.

Beg pardon, Andrew? I believe this leftist feminist is providing you with an open forum on my tab. If you don’t like it, feel free to go. Any bullshit like that again, and I’ll see you out myself.

I was using hyperbole.

How is it different? 1) the American revolution was not fought to protect one of the greatest injustices in history; 2) we won.

I have to thank you, really. I never thought I’d get a conservative poster to actually whistle dixie in public. Folks, we got ourselves a real live confederate sympathizer here.

I’m not a Confederate sympathizer or neo-Confederate. I just happen to believe in self-determination. And I’m not even a conservative, I’m a libertarian.

Despite what politically correct leftists may say, the Civil War was fought to keep the Union together, not to end slavery. Keep in mind that slavery was legal in several of the United States and that the Emancipation Procalmation only applied to CSA territory under Union control – slaves in Confederate-held land and the Union weren’t freed.

Jon, is it your view that Alito will not vote to reverse Roe, or do you think we can’t tell?

I don’t think we can tell. On the one hand, we have things like his dissent in Casey, and then on the other hand we have some indications that he believes in substantive due process. But I do think however he votes, it will be a well-reasoned opinion.

I appreciate the tone of your most recent posts, Thomas. It’s pretty hard to square them with some of the more over-the-top attacks you made on Alito initially, but at least you can admit that you think Alito is reasoning in good faith and isn’t just a results-oriented conservative who comes to the conclusion he wants and then reasons backward from there.

I believe Scalia is disingenuous. His jurisprudence on abortion and on homosexuality is tinged with a personal animus that Alito has never displayed.

I would disagree with you there, particularly on abortion. Scalia’s abortion jurisprudence makes very clear that he doesn’t think the Constitution requires it to be outlawed. He simply believes that it’s a matter to be sorted out legislatively. I also don’t see the raging anti-gay bigot that you seem to see in his opinions, but I guess that’s just a difference in how we read him.

do you think Alito is a conservative hack will vote against Roe because his personal policy preferences control his jurisprudence?

Conservative hack? If you mean a mere apparatus of the Republican Party’s conservative wing, driven by passing partisan politics, then absolutely not. I believe Alito is concerned with more abstract matters of constitutional jurisprudence. That is to say, I don’t accuse him of disingenuousness. I believe, for example, that he wants to greatly restrict the CC because he believes in a restricted CC, and not that this is merely a means to some more result-driven end.

I would not use the word “hack” to describe a very smart, able jurist who has strongly conservative views on how to read the Constitution. Hack, I believe, implies either mediocrity or disingenuousness.

vote against Roe because his personal policy preferences control his jurisprudence?

No. I don’t believe he will vote to reverse Roe for the reason I believe Scalia does. I believe Scalia is disingenuous. His jurisprudence on abortion and on homosexuality is tinged with a personal animus that Alito has never displayed. Scalia turns positively red when talking about homosexuality, for example. His flaring temper betrays his real motive: queers disgust him. If Alito feels that way, I’ve never heard it, and I don’t suggest that.

(I’m calling Scalia a conservative hack. Despite the greatest intellect on the Court, on some issues he merely marshalls it in service of prejudice, like a drunk using a lamp-post for support rather than illumination.)

If Alito votes to reverse Roe, and I think he will, it will be because he looks back at Griswald and really believes that the Court took a wrong turn — that the rights mean only what the cold parchment says, that there is no higher purpose to serve by understanding a system of ordered liberties.

I’m not saying that’s a conclusion independent of one’s view on the issues. None of us is an island, capable of Platonically pure reason and sealed off from influences. So, if Alito’s view is that abortion and sodomy are wrong (and we don’t know for sure that those are his view), that might factor into a conclusion that an expansive reading of a right to privacy in the Constitution is a bad thing. But that’s not the same thing as self-consciously saying to one’s self, “self, we need to end abortion, so we better eliminate the right to privacy and destroy any underpinnings for a right to terminate a pregnancy.”

Jon, is it your view that Alito will not vote to reverse Roe, or do you think we can’t tell?