Repercussions

My household is on vacation at a seaside nature reserve this week. Online access isn’t great. If I don’t post when you expect me to, that’s why.

There is really only one appropriate subject today: dismantling of the USA from within by its own Supreme Court. I don’t mean it is all Americans can talk about. With the overturning of Roe v Wade, it immediately became the top of the news in the UK too.

Why? Because what happens in the USA affects the entire world, and especially the UK where we are on a parallel (albeit usually less dramatic and certainly less violent) course, as demonstrated by Brexit and what’s happening to our human rights legislation. It’s courtesy of many of the same sources of funding and strategy.

What’s Happening

Even though stripping the right to bodily autonomy from slightly more than half the population is extremely bad, it is not the most significant feature of what SCOTUS just did, it is not all SCOTUS has done this year (or even this month), and this warped SCOTUS is building up speed.

Roe v Wade was based on an implied Constitutional right to privacy. That is gone now. Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization made it clear that next he wants to target contraception, same-sex marriage and consensual sex between what the government decides are the wrong people. Government getting into people’s bedrooms now has the go-ahead in the USA. If government can be in your bedroom, nothing about your personal life is forbidden to it.

But there is more. SCOTUS has recently been chipping away at and sometimes shattering other foundation blocks of the USA’s rule of law. Reading articles by and for lawyers about this is eye opening.

Miranda was based on a right to justice and fairness. It has recently been undercut. As of the Vega v Tekoh decision, it is now harder to pursue legal recourse if police fail to inform you of your rights upon arrest and then violate your rights.

Americans could expect that if they were arrested and needed to undergo forensic testing that could produce evidence which might help their defense, habeus corpus would require the authorities to transport them to undergo such testing. Shoop v Twyford took that away. They could also expect that if ineffective legal counsel caused them to be convicted of murder, they could appeal to a federal court with new counsel. Shinn v Martinez Ramirez took that away. (It’s hard to focus on the habeus corpus issue when cases involve hideous murders, but claiming poor legal representation resulted in death row is what got this to the Supreme Court.)

Carson v Makin says that where funding is provided to any private schools, a private school cannot be denied such funding only because it is religious. This decision is not as sweeping as many mainstream media articles make it sound, but it is disturbing. The Constitution is clear about separation of church and state.

Becerra v Empire Health Foundation determined that it’s okay for the federal department of Health and Human Services to use a funding formula that undercalculates Medicare payments to hospitals which serve a disproportionately high share of low income patients.

Broader Implications

Too much of the media obliges the newly extreme majority on the Supreme Court, calling them originalists because that’s what they call themselves. They aren’t. No originalist could see an exception in the Constitution to anything as fundamental and as clearly stated as separation of church and state. No originalist would see states’ rights as so important that one class of people can be forced to surrender the use of their bodies (the Dobbs decision), and at the same time see the opposite, federal power so omnipotent that it overrides states’ rights and forces the most expansive possible extrapolation on the right to bear arms (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen).

The new SCOTUS majority is dismantling the rule of law, not upholding it. Its decisions this year are ideological, flying away from precedent and ripping holes in the Constitution.

Repercussions

Have you ever tried to do business with a company that is based in a country where the rule of law does not apply? I have. The opportunity unexpectedly fell into my lap. Notice I said I tried, not that I succeeded. It turned out to be too impenetrable, subject to the whim of distant authorities whose intentions were too opaque, too hazardous. It’s fine with me that the opportunity didn’t pan out.

When a country is powerful enough, some people will try to do business with it even when there is no rule of law, but most will turn elsewhere if they can, as I did. If you’re a lawless nation, most of the best businesses avoid you or limit the deals they will do with you.

Bad guys don’t take over a country to have the money to themselves. They do it to have as much power over everything and everyone as they can get, and they willingly destroy value along the way. Dealing with them puts you at risk of having something you value destroyed to suit their purposes.

Moving on to politics, to say the USA is polarized would be inaccurate. A distinct majority of Americans repeatedly make it clear that we want a Constitutional democratic republic. The nation is grappling with an authoritarian takeover attempt by an extremist subset of a minority. The attempt is approaching its culmination. The rest of the world is watching to see which side will prevail.

I want the rule of law reinstated. I want my birth country to save itself and resume its quest to be a more perfect nation. I can’t be sure I will get what I want.

I know people in the USA who are determined to do all they can to put the country back on track. Precisely because of what’s happening there, I can’t be there with them. I have to do my bits from across the Pond, and also do some bits toward a similar goal in the UK. Losing either country would break my heart. Losing both is more than I want to think about.

Life doesn’t stop while all of this is happening. I’ve been following one woman in particular in Ukraine since Russia began its invasion. She does what so many of us will need to do wherever we are. When it is terribly dangerous to be where she is, she goes somewhere in Ukraine that is less dangerous for a while, then returns when she can. With colleagues from her job, she helped create software to aid Ukrainians in need. She finds out about people in more dire situations than hers, asks what they need, and uses whatever funds she can raise to send them parcels to fill those needs. (She posts a photo of each parcel with a short summary about who she is helping, without disclosing identifying information, and what she is sending to them.) Otherwise she goes about her life as much as possible. She works as best she can no matter where she is. She finds groceries and cooks meals. She gets a haircut, goes to the dentist, adores her pet kitten, and holds onto her vision of a democratic nation that will someday be at peace. It can only happen if enough people like her continue to do their part and, as the saying goes, be the change they want to see.

We are often not as alone as it seems. As soon as the Dobbs decision hit the news, I saw Canadians offering through social media to help women from the USA who need now-banned health services, a real-life echo of The Handmaid’s Tale. Whenever funds for parcels to people in need run low, the Ukrainian woman I follow says so and people all over the world send small donations.

But a country that does not operate by the rule of law can become very much alone in the world, perhaps mostly avoided, even becoming an international pariah.

In the USA (and probably also the UK) it will get worse. Whether it ever gets better is up to every one of us. We have to stand up for it.