Supreme Court rulings we've survived
The rule of law died last week. So declared an official from the conservative Heartland Institute, not to be outdone by the somewhat less definitive but equally gloomy pronouncement from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, headlined, "American Freedom Strangled." There was bound to be a gnashing of teeth and an overuse of death metaphors no matter what the Supreme Court decided on the Affordable Care Act. Liberals and Democrats were spared the hand-wringing only because a slim majority of justices upheld the Obama administration's signature health-care program.
The rule of law died last week. So declared an official from the conservative Heartland Institute, not to be outdone by the somewhat less definitive but equally gloomy pronouncement from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, headlined, "American Freedom Strangled."
There was bound to be a gnashing of teeth and an overuse of death metaphors no matter what the Supreme Court decided on the Affordable Care Act. Liberals and Democrats were spared the hand-wringing only because a slim majority of justices upheld the Obama administration's signature health-care program.
But a vital truth has been lost in the Twitter- and cable-fueled frenzy: The country has experienced its share of presumably earth-shattering decisions without catastrophic consequences.
Take, for instance, the court's 1996 decision in Romer v. Evans. No one, as far as we know, has filed for, much less obtained, a license to marry his pet goat — as a Colorado Springs pastor predicted after the justices struck down a Colorado law that discriminated against gays and lesbians. No human-goat nuptials after the justices invalidated a Texas law that criminalized gay sex, either.
The high court's 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia has not paved the way for an onslaught of grotesque genetic mutations in biracial babies. The justices in that case repudiated a Virginia law that banned interracial marriages, even though the state claimed it was a legitimate means to prevent "physiological and psychological evils." (One Virginia sheriff at the time compared the marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving, he white and she black, to a union of different species of birds, bound to lead to abnormalities in the offspring.)
And the District of Columbia, despite dire predictions from gun-control advocates, continues to experience relatively low homicide rates even though its strict gun laws were invalidated by the Supreme Court four years ago.
There have, of course, been decisions that continue to fuel discontent. Roe v. Wade is perhaps the seminal example of our age. Abortion continues to be a political and social lightning rod. Still, the republic stands, the body politic continues to function (as it were), and the dialogue continues.
More often, the American public comes to accept — even embrace — decisions that were once derided by some as dangerous shifts in the social or political tectonic plates that undergird the country. Think 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the segregationist notion that separate but equal school facilities for black children were acceptable; 1963's Gideon v. Wainwright, which guaranteed indigent defendants the right to counsel; 1966's Miranda v. Arizona, which gave rise to the much-quoted "You have the right to remain silent"; and 1974's United States v. Nixon, which essentially proclaimed that no man, not even the president, is above the law, to the dismay of those of who saw the ruling as an erosion of the legitimate powers of the chief executive.
These cases were all based on interpretations of the Constitution that cannot be undone by Congress. But the Supreme Court's decision in the health-care case is not as airtight, and is therefore open to challenge or revision or annihilation by Congress. It's a possibility not lost on House Speaker John Boehner, who said the "ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety."
The republic stands. And the dialogue continues.
