Black woman sez (didn't catch her name): look, that's why we have a constitution. The majority does NOT have the right to legislate the rights of a minority. IOW, we have a judicial branch because some brightknob realized that, if you couldn't leave things only up to "the people" but needed a little checkin' and balancin'.
Worth thinking about when the next time I have to listen to anyone droning on about how the abortion struggle's gone haywire because we used the constitution and the judicial branch to advance our rights. (And, no, sorry. don't freakin' even try to tell me about how we didn't pave the soil for accepting such a thing. This would be a serious misreading of feminist history. Uh, misreading? No, I mean: lack of reading.)
Completely Bitchy
^^^^^
CB: Plus, how else does any social struggle "lock in" whatever it wins except through changing the law; and the constitution is the highest law, so that's the one to aim for for fundamental struggles like right to abortion. We need a constitutional amendment to a right to abortion. The Supreme Court decision is too vulnerable to change by bad justices. Constitutional amendment is going over the heads of the judiciary.
The "street heat" of the American Revolution was enshrined in law as the original Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The "street heat" of the Civil War, abolishing slavery, was "enshrined" as the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constit.
Hard to stay out "in the street" forever. Of course, it does become necessary to go back out in the street. The 14th Amendment was undermined in the interim since the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement had to go back out "in the streets" , to revive it.