{"id":139,"date":"2005-12-01T20:12:26","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T00:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=139"},"modified":"2005-12-02T08:23:56","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T12:23:56","slug":"dura-lex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"Dura Lex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some arguments are just tiresome; it\u2019s getting so boring pointing out the childishness of the following that in future perhaps we\u2019ll simply link and refer as *res iudicata*. So, maybe for the last time, here\u2019s a classic fallacious argument. Citing the deceased Henry J.Friendly\u2019s unpublished opinion on abortion, George Will<\/a> writes,<\/p>\n

>The assertion of such a privacy right would, he said, invalidate “a great variety” of statutes that existed when the 14th Amendment was adopted — e.g., those against attempted suicide, bestiality, even drug use.<\/p>\n

And the child screams: you said I have a right to privacy, so anything I do privately, including crimes, is protected by the constitution. Nope. An assertion of a right to privacy is merely an invitation to the clueless to raise such objections.<\/p>\n

More to the point, in the same article, we see yet another variation on the \u201csubverting the democratic process argument\u201d against *Roe*:<\/p>\n

>The day after Roe was decided, the New York Times called it a “resolution” of the abortion issue. Not really. Roe short-circuited a democratic process of accommodating abortion differences — a process that had produced a larger increase in the number of legal abortions in the three years before the Roe decision than were to occur in the three years after.<\/p>\n

First, for good or for ill, *Roe* answered a constitutional question; as a branch of a democratic government, duly appointed according to procedures outlined in the *Constitution of the United States of America* the Supreme Court of the United States embodied a democratic process as it always does. Second, a vigorous debate has taken place ever since (as well as a terrorist campaign of violent extremists). Third, democratic processes have played around the edges of the issue ever since (primarily restrictions and limitations on funding and so forth). Finally, the very democratic process of a constitutional amendment has always remained. <\/p>\n

To assert then, as Will and Friendly do, that the occurrence of all of the vigorous democracy was the product of an unwise decision makes one wonder what they have in mind by \u201cdemocratic process.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some arguments are just tiresome; it\u2019s getting so boring pointing out the childishness of the following that in future perhaps we\u2019ll simply link and refer as *res iudicata*. So, maybe for the last time, here\u2019s a classic fallacious argument. Citing the deceased Henry J.Friendly\u2019s unpublished opinion on abortion, George Will writes, >The assertion of such … Continue reading Dura Lex<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}