Articles by Lawrence Goldstone

The current term of the Supreme Court promises to be one of the most pivotal in decades. Although abortion has received most of the attention, with both the new Texas bounty law and a direct attack on Roe v. Wade by Mississippi on the docket, the justices will rule on many other inflammatory issues, including challenges to voting laws passed in Republican-controlled states that may well determine the future of American democracy. After two centuries in which both the right to vote and ability t...

The mood among Democrats these days seems to oscillate between panic and despair. The Biden administration, which billed itself as restoring competence and order to the political process, not only grievously botched the Afghanistan withdrawal and the removal of Haitian immigrants in Texas, but cannot even attain a semblance of order within its own party. Whether it be the filibuster, government spending, or tax policy, Democrats seem afflicted with an auto-immune disease that requires them to at...

On September 6, 2021, Alan Braid, a seventy-six-year-old OBGYN in San Antonio, Texas, performed an abortion on a woman in her first trimester. A few years ago, this procedure would have attracted little attention. This time, however, Dr. Braid became a national headline. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, he wrote, “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.” What made Dr. Braid’s decision notew...

On September 1, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, refused to prevent new, draconian Texas abortion legislation from taking effect. The Court’s tentative acceptance of that law, which among other provisions, only allowed a woman to seek an abortion before she likely knew she was pregnant, provoked outrage not only among pro-choice advocates, but also from many legal scholars deeply disturbed by the majority’s seeming abandonment of accepted jurisprudence. The proper course with...

Two of the most frequently used words in right-wing America, “freedom” and “Constitution,” are also among the most misused. Many American conservatives believe the “Constitution” gives them the “freedom” to do just about anything they like. They are free to own guns and carry them openly, free to refuse to be vaccinated, free to refuse to wear masks in public places, free to refuse to accept the results of a free and fair election, and, to some, even free to invade government buildings and threa...

Thanks to the Constitutionally-mandated periodic census, the House of Representatives will look a lot different for the 2022 midterm elections, with some states gaining seats, some losing them, and partisan gerrymanders sprouting across the nation like sunflowers. As a result, Republicans, it seems certain, will be in a far better position to retake control of the chamber. The cause of this upheaval, the 2020 census, was the most controversial in recent memory. Ordinarily, this once-every-ten-y...

On July 22, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch made national news by filing a brief with the Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, claiming the 1973 decision and the subsequent 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey were “egregiously wrong” as “both recognize a right that has no basis in the Constitution.”  She added, “It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government.”  Days later, 228 Republican leg...

In June 1776, a group of American colonists met in Philadelphia to declare their independence from Great Britain and the end of George III’s dominion over what would become the United States. Almost all agreed that being ruled by a self-perpetuating monarch who had no qualifications beyond being born into the job; who remained fixed in power without the approbation of his subjects; who could dictate policy and arbitrarily twist the law as he pleased; and who could delegate authority to a group o...

It has become popular on the Left to ascribe Republicans’ recent attempts to change voting laws as anti-democratic, even potentially criminal.  There are those, such as Paul Waldman at the Washington Post, who have gone so far as to suggest that the Right has descended into madness. One common thread is that Republican legislators, either in Congress or at the state level, have willfully and cynically renounced the sacred principles embodied in the United States Constitution, the core of which, ...