If I said the Supreme Court had too many Jews, that should be unpublishable anti-semitic nonsense

01/08/2014

If I said the Supreme Court had too many Jews, that should be unpublishable anti-semitic nonsense

But apparently it's okay in polite society to say, in effect, that the Supreme Court has too many Catholics, as Jamie Stiehm does in the US News:

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. ...

... More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female.

As has often been observed, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice among liberals.

Update: Marc DeGirolami offers a scathing and compelling critique:

The specific claim seems to be that by granting an emergency stay in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, Justice Sotomayor is waging a "war on women" because she is imposing her Catholic views on the rest of the nation in violation of the law. But that claim is buried within lots of other mud ...

... if the author were even marginally more serious about providing evidence for her claims, she might have investigated how many of the other judges who have granted injunctions in these cases--18 other such courts, by my current count, and more judges than that--are Catholic. If they are all Catholic, is it also her view that they are all imposing Catholicism on the nation in violation of the law? If they are not all Catholic, what explains their legal findings? Are they all imposing their non-Catholic religious views notwithstanding the law? What if some of the judges who granted injunctions have no religious affiliation? Are they also imposing their non-religious views in finding for the Little Sisters? Or is it only when a judge is Catholic that it can be assumed that she is imposing her views? And what about the judges who denied injunctions? Are any of them Catholic? If they are not, are they imposing their views on the rest of us too? If they are Catholic, I suppose one could claim that they are the good sort of Catholic—Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, as the author puts it--judges who don't impose their views at all. Still, it would be useful to have this information in order to assess the cogency of the claims.

Posted at 02:02 PM in Religion, SCOTUS and Con Law | Permalink

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But apparently it's okay in polite society to say, in effect, that the Supreme Court has too many Catholics, as Jamie Stiehm does in the US News:

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. ...

... More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female.

As has often been observed, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice among liberals.

Update: Marc DeGirolami offers a scathing and compelling critique:

The specific claim seems to be that by granting an emergency stay in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, Justice Sotomayor is waging a "war on women" because she is imposing her Catholic views on the rest of the nation in violation of the law. But that claim is buried within lots of other mud ...

... if the author were even marginally more serious about providing evidence for her claims, she might have investigated how many of the other judges who have granted injunctions in these cases--18 other such courts, by my current count, and more judges than that--are Catholic. If they are all Catholic, is it also her view that they are all imposing Catholicism on the nation in violation of the law? If they are not all Catholic, what explains their legal findings? Are they all imposing their non-Catholic religious views notwithstanding the law? What if some of the judges who granted injunctions have no religious affiliation? Are they also imposing their non-religious views in finding for the Little Sisters? Or is it only when a judge is Catholic that it can be assumed that she is imposing her views? And what about the judges who denied injunctions? Are any of them Catholic? If they are not, are they imposing their views on the rest of us too? If they are Catholic, I suppose one could claim that they are the good sort of Catholic—Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, as the author puts it--judges who don't impose their views at all. Still, it would be useful to have this information in order to assess the cogency of the claims.