Letters to the Editor: This is not a ‘conservative’ Supreme Court. It’s reactionary

To the editor: When I read a piece like UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s “The Supreme Court’s conservatives now have free rein. Here’s how your rights will change,” I am reminded that one of the GOP’s strengths is dominating our political debate by setting key language in ways that strengthen their arguments. “Late-term abortion,” “death tax” and “entitlement reform,” for example, are ideologically loaded and utterly deceptive.

The coup de grâce? Republicans have gotten everyone, even their opponents, to call them “conservative.” They are anything but that.

This Supreme Court has ignored the Constitution and precedent on decisions that promote forced birth, gun violence, the erosion of our democracy and, most egregiously, a worsening climate crisis. This behavior is anything but “conservative” because it doesn’t conserve Americans’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Chemerinsky used the word several times to describe this court, perpetuating a fallacy. Call Republicans and their justices what they are: reactionaries.

Jordan Deglise Moore, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I find Chemerinsky’s statement that this Supreme Court term “will be the culmination of five decades of efforts by conservatives to seize control of the court” to be rather amusing.

Would he have us believe that liberals and progressives have not strived for control of the court these past five decades?

Whether it is thanks to luck, skill or timing (or a combination of all three), we nicely have a court in place that we conservatives can enjoy while Chemerinsky chews on his sour grapes.

Michael Dragotto, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The title alone of Chemerinsky’s piece is frightening. This is a court that will take America back to the dark ages while much of the planet, including countries in the so-called Third World (I call them exploited countries), is trying to move toward a more equitable world.

The Supreme Court of Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country, just decriminalized abortion, while our justices are poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But as the recent “Bans Off Our Bodies” protests showed, they will have to face the wrath of this country’s strongest political minority — women — if they go that route.

We will not go back to back-alley abortions.

Vicki Rupasinghe, Ojai

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To the editor: The notion that ours is a country of laws, rather than naked political power, disappeared with the Bush vs. Gore decision, in which the court arbitrarily decided that George W. Bush won Florida in the 2000 election and hence the presidency.

More recently, the court overturned longstanding 2nd Amendment precedent, which had previously recognized that the right to bear arms pertained to a “well-regulated militia” rather than individual citizens. So much for “originalism.”

This court has already overturned Roe vs. Wade in Texas by failing to block the vigilante law that encourages lawsuits against anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion.

So, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, it’s just a fact that this court is composed of a “bunch of partisan hacks.”

Scott McKenzie, La Cañada Flintridge