And they’re adopting the format that he long said he wanted: the lawyers finish their arguments more or less uninterrupted, and then are questioned after that. He said he doesn’t like the Scalia/Ginsberg style of barging in, interrupting the lawyers mid-sentence as they’re making their presentation. And by the time they’re done with their interruptions, most of the questions have been asked.
So the way that article presents the question is ridiculous – “no one knows why Thomas has been silent!” Yes, we do, he’s said why he didn’t ask questions, and the reason why he’s asking questions now is because the court is doing what he said they should have been doing for decades. Let the lawyers talk and then ask questions later on.
Correct. But somehow that pregnant woman in the HOV lane got her ticket thrown out (in Texas) claiming that SCOTUS did in fact say that. Yeah, Calvinball, I know.
Judaism is not a centralized religion with a governing body, unlike many global religions. However, first breath is probably what is in the vast majority of jewish literature.
My understanding is that Orthodox Jews are more likely to believe that life begins at conception. What Americans think Jews believe is skewed because Orthodox Jews are a minority among American Jews but more significant worldwide, where is seems like Ashkenazic vs Sephardic seems a much more important distinction than Orthodox vs non-Orthodox.
You might get a different answer if you surveyed all Jewish literature instead of American Jewish literature. Do you know what the Chief Rabbinate of Israel would say?
I have no idea what the Chief Rabbinate would say, but the Chief Rabbinate is not some governing officer for Jews, it is a decentralized religion. My recollection is even most orthodox adhered to the “first breath” philosophy, but who knows these days, orthodox were historically never anti-vax either, but now we’ve got sects popping up that are.
My main point is that it’s inaccurate to conflate “what Jews believe” with “what American Jews believe” or “Jewish literature” with “Jewish literature originally written in (American) English”.
I suspect that the Chief Rabbinate is more representative of Orthodox Jewish opinion on the subject than some might guess.
Idk who the Chief Rabbinate is other than a) it doesn’t matter and b) the Chief Justice is gonna say “lol fuck you” if it gets that far and that’s all that matters.
The Supreme Court does not now and has never really cared what a central religious authority says about the religion the person in court says they belong to, or what the texts of that religion say. They generally just take the word of the claimant that something is against their religion. At least, that’s why they let the Hobby Lobby folks not cover Plan B on the claim that they believed it was abortifacient and against their religion. It didn’t really matter that Plan B isn’t abortifiacient, and the Bible says nothing about birth control. Their claim that it was against their religion was sufficient for the court to grant them that it was.
Of course, we’re going to find out that this only applies to conservative Christians, but that’s what the precedent is.