Comment by tsol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsol | Hacker News Reader

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Sorry, I agree with the rest of it. That part is just a pet peeve of mine so it distracted me-- but actually I do agree. I myself haven't read any detailed judgements by the Supreme Court, very few people do.

I think people judge the outcome of these very consequential lethal decisions morally rather than based on their legal merits. In fact I doubt most people are equipped to judge cases on their lethal merits. At the end of the day if a badly supported law is passed that many people agree with, they'll go along with it. If a well supported law that people disagree with is passed, they'll complain until someone finds a problem with it no matter how minor or abstract. Many people don't understand that legality=/=morality, or they desperately want them to be the same

FWIW, I would encourage you to read the leaked text.

I have read a few opinions of the Supreme Court over the years. I have no specific background in law, and I am not even a native English speaker, but I have found them uniformly accessible to a layman. They use a dozen or so boilerplate latin expressions that you need to get used to, but they are otherwise fairly readable.

The leaked text by Mr. Alito is a masterpiece of English prose and scholarship, in my opinion. In 90 pages or so, it explains the history of the issue and the legal theories that common-law judges have advanced since the 14th century. It analyzes the arguments in favor and against Roe and Wade. It also summarizes the legal handling of the issue in various US states.

Irrespective of whether or not you agree with the conclusion, these opinions are one of the few pieces of contemporary literature worth reading. I myself am looking forward to the final form of this text (should the Court decide to uphold it) as well as all the dissenting opinions, which I expect to be of similarly high caliber.

I actually got a chuckle out of the 30 pages of statutes from places that are now US states and territories from 1850 till 1973.

Thought it was odd and hurried to include Hawaii's 1850 statute. Since it was neither a territory or state then. Wish I knew a news source or discussion board that could find this stuff moderately entertaining, instead of looking for angles to discredit the entire institution.

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