Home > Author > Elie Mystal
41 " To not do so because some old dead white people didn’t have the knowledge or decency to do the same is not an alternative theory of legal interpretation. It’s the promulgation of evil hiding behind the banality of cowardice. "
― Elie Mystal , Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
42 " The law is not science; it’s jazz. It’s a series of iterations based off a few consistent beats. "
43 " discussion with term limits. Expand the Court, pass term limits, have the expanded Court rule that term limits are constitutional, then start rotating one of the current justices off the bench about once a year. The Supreme Court as an institution would remain a powerful check on the constitutional excesses of the elected branches. "
44 " This is what originalists do when confronted with an area of law that was originally vague or open for interpretation: they make some shit up. "
45 " the institution would be responsive to the winners of democratic elections over time. The individual justices would remain independent and unremovable during their terms in office. But the confirmation process would be depoliticized to the point of becoming almost rote, and each individual justice could not hold sway over our polity for as long as Pfizer can keep them alive. "
46 " If you think of the Bill of Rights like a hostage video, the first eight are Madison saying, “They are treating me well. I am being fed and receiving medical treatment for my injuries.” The last two are when he blinks out “They electrocuted my testicles” in Morse code before they cut the feed. "
47 " which means my constitutional rights and physical safety hinge on whether a guy like Darren Wilson is afraid I’ll use my big lips to suck in his soul from ten yards away. "
48 " Say what you will about the Draconian Code of Athens, but at least it’s an ethos. "
49 " A white person who knows that the cops are there to protect her privilege, not enforce the law and keep the peace. "
50 " You can’t make Freddy Krueger friendly by giving him a new hat. "
51 " If the Fifth Amendment recognizes the right against self-incrimination, then we should stop asking people to incriminate themselves. Why is that hard to understand? "
52 " They simply wanted Phillips to accept payment for services he started an entire business to render. Phillips’s claim that his religious freedom would be compromised by being forced to engage in his own business is ludicrous on its face. Refusing to do your job because the person paying you to do it has different beliefs than you is not a religious objection, it’s plain and simple bigotry. The Colorado "
53 " They did not want Phillips to put himself inside the cake and jump out and scream “I love gay people” at an opportune moment. "
54 " To call white people a suspect class is to render the entire phrase meaningless. "
55 " A constitutional right that people have no way of accessing through litigation is just, like, a suggestion. "
56 " The First Amendment was never going to lose this battle on Kennedy’s desk. But the way Kennedy decided to make it win solved nothing. Kennedy refused to decide whether Phillips had a constitutional right to bigotry under the free exercise clause. Instead, he ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which punished Phillips under the CADA, was insufficiently respectful of Phillips’s religious objections. That’s right: Kennedy wouldn’t call Phillips illegally bigoted against gay couples; instead he called the Colorado board illegally bigoted against religious people. It was a punk move, done by a man who was sick of history having its eyes on him. Kennedy peaced out less than two months later and gave Brett Kavanaugh his job. "
57 " Thomas, and the rest of the conservatives, absolutely believe substantive due process exists; they just think the Fourteenth Amendment is hiding rights for businesses they think are people, instead of minorities they wish were not. "
58 " If we’re going to talk about the constitutional right to an abortion, we’re going to talk about it from first principles. And the first principle that the people who wrote the Constitution missed is that women are people. Full, equal, people. If you believe that, and I know a lot of men don’t, but if you believe that women are people, then the right to privacy and all the reproductive rights that flow from it is a fairly straightforward thing. "
59 " Indiana is weird. "
