Also, we should perhaps be less worried about imminent efforts to legally ban contraception; it seems like this administration’s MO is to illegally ban things; kind of like the sham holdup of the morning-after pill discussed in detail in this very article, and in a wider sense (as described in Charlie Savage’s Boston Globe article), the various pieces of legislation that the president has never vetoed, but instead attached a little note that says, by the way, this law does not apply.

Argh. Anyway.

In both cases, lawmakers are attempting to codify in law proscriptions against what are essentially matters of personal morality and ethics.

Like the prohibition era when alcohol was banned, all that really happens is that access to it goes underground. People don’t stop drinking because alcohol is illegal, nor do I have any illusions that making contraception illegal will stop it from being used.

Ultimately, laws that attempt to directly regulate people’s behaviours through some kind of arbitrary morality fail – either when challenged in the courts, or quietly by being ignored by the population. As has been demonstrated time and again, legislated morality fails.

Magis, at Harvard it’s not even a required course.

Philistines.

Well, Fitz argues like someone who hasn’t taken Con Law yet, since the idea of incremental changes in the Court’s opinions through subsequent decisions seems to have eluded him.

It takes a certain crass opportunism to paint our rights to contraception as under a likely, much less immanent threat.

The real bulwark that protects access to contraception is not going to be static legalisms but what our society comes to collectively believe and ultimately accept is their proper role.

Since the leader of the party which currently rules us claims the power to indefinitely imprison citizens in this country without administrative or judicial review of any kind, and also claims that the Fourth Amendment is somehow inoperative under our current circumstances, it is quite unclear to me which freedoms and rights we may safely take for granted, or whether the collective belief of the preponderant majority will suffice to protect those freedoms against legalistic encroachment.

The real bulwark that protects access to contraception is not going to be static legalisms but what our society comes to collectively believe and ultimately accept is their proper role. And that requires a larger debate over the role of religion in public life– and the place of openness and freedom regarding sexual behavior in social life.

From “The Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual.” http://WWW.homelanddecency.com

I know of no Law School that would leave out ConLaw in the first year. So much else wouldn’t make sense without it. Hell, I had to take it as an undergrad course.

Now I don’t know if you were kidding or not but yes, Carry Nation is alive and well and living in Kansas.

I suppose I can lay awake worrying about a return to prohibition.