>>> nathan at newman.org 05/15/01 10:51PM >>>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema" <crdbronx at erols.com>
>It is indeed true that we tended to like this kind of thing when it
benefited
>individual rights and a nascent feminist agenda. Has anybody looked into
the
>political implications of the fact that we gained these things, on the
cheap, as
>it were, by judicial fiat, rather than by fighting for them?
((((((((((((
CB: Another way of looking at it is that the Supreme Court was impacted by exactly the fight for those rights, i.e. they _were_ won by fighting for them and not on the cheap
I am sure Nathan is aware that his argument below depends critically on an historical counterfactual - if Roe v Wade had held there is no constit. right to an abortion - , so it is very speculative to conclude that the ERA would have passed had Roe v Wade not been decided in favor of a right to an abortion. So, for example the following proposition is not demonstrated:
"The irony is that if the Court liberals had wanted to advance women's rights most comprehensively, they would have joined Rehnquist's dissent. The resulting reaction probably would have sped passage of the ERA before opposition was gathered to defeat it in the critical last states."
CB: On the other hand, we might have no right to an abortion and no ERA both. That is just as plausible and outcome. Aggravating the contradictions doesn't necessarily work.
I would favor that the movement use Constitutional Amendment campaigns over Supreme Court decisions in general, but if a case comes to the Supreme Court, I would not favor Justices voting against a right to an abortion in order to juice up an ERA campaign.