{"id":52615,"date":"2023-08-06T14:45:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T21:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=52615"},"modified":"2023-08-06T14:45:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T21:45:30","slug":"everyday-erinyes-382","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2023\/08\/06\/everyday-erinyes-382\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #382"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

In the last couple of months, I think we were all shocked that the state of Alabama chose to defy the Supreme Court of the United States by redrawing the map of its Congressional Districts to be more, not less, racist. But just because we haven’t noticed it before doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. Each of the parts of this article refers us to a longer article, more dedicated to the events of that particular case and its repercussions. But you can certainly get an idea from the summaries. The third one in particular is noteworthy because it is predictive of where we may be going in the future – especially if we continue to lose bits and pieces of our democracy.
\n==============================================================<\/p>\n

Alabama is not the first state to defy a Supreme Court ruling: 3 essential reads on why that\u00a0matters<\/h1>\n
Police officers patrolling the front of the Supreme Court building.
\nAnna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Howard Manly<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In its 5-4 Allen v. Milligan<\/a> decision on June 8, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state of Alabama to redraw its congressional voting districts and consider race as it made up the new districts. The court had found that the state\u2019s political districts diluted the strength of Black voters by denying them the possibility of electing a second Black member to the state\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n

While the court did not specifically order the state to create a second majority-Black congressional district, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear how he viewed the long history of racist voter suppression in Alabama \u2013 and what factors should weigh prominently in the state\u2019s new political map.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates shouldn\u2019t let race be the primary factor in deciding how to draw boundaries, but it should be a consideration,\u201d Roberts wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe line we have drawn is between consciousness and predominance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alabama state officials submitted the state\u2019s new boundaries<\/a> by the Republican-controlled state legislature in late July.<\/p>\n

But the new districts still include only one in which Black voters could reasonably elect<\/a> a candidate of their own choosing, not two as voting rights advocates had argued \u2013 and as the Supreme Court appeared to endorse.<\/p>\n

Over the years, The Conversation U.S. has published numerous stories exploring the consequences of not complying with court rulings and what resistance, including resistance to decisions involving race, does to the legitimacy of America\u2019s legal system. Here are selections from those articles.<\/p>\n

1. When the Supreme court loses Americans\u2019 loyalty<\/h2>\n

As political scientists Joseph Daniel Ura<\/a> of Texas A&M and Matthew Hall<\/a> of Notre Dame wrote<\/a>, the Supreme Court\u2019s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education revealed \u201cwhite Americans\u2019 tenuous loyalty\u201d to the authority of the federal judiciary.<\/p>\n

In Brown, the court unanimously held that racial segregation in public education violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than recognizing the court\u2019s authoritative interpretation of the Constitution,\u201d Ura and Hall explained, \u201cmany white Americans participated in an extended, violent campaign of resistance to the desegregation ruling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of such resistance is clear. \u201cEroding legitimacy means that government officials and ordinary people become increasingly unlikely to accept public policies with which they disagree,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

2. Oklahoma resists ruling over tribal authority<\/h2>\n

In June 2020, the Supreme Court decided in McGirt v. Oklahoma<\/a> that the Muscogee Creek reservation in Oklahoma is Indian Country.<\/p>\n

As an expert in federal Indian law<\/a> at Wayne State University, Kirsten Matoy Carlson wrote<\/a> that the ruling meant federal criminal laws applied to much of eastern Oklahoma as Indian Country and enabled the federal government \u2013 instead of the state of Oklahoma \u2013 to prosecute crimes committed by and against American Indians there.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma state officials refused to comply and actively resisted<\/a> implementation of the McGirt decision. They asked the Supreme Court to reverse it over 40 times.<\/p>\n

The strategy paid off. The U.S. Supreme Court took up a similar case and in June 2022, decided to roll back some of its 2020 decision.<\/p>\n

As Carlson wrote, \u201cConflicts between state and tribal governments are not new; states have long tried to assert power \u2013 often violently \u2013 over sovereign tribes.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Court\u2019s power may pose a danger to its legitimacy<\/h2>\n

Political scientist Richard L. Pacelle Jr.<\/a> at University of Tennessee, Knoxville has examined how the power and authority of the court have waxed and waned over the centuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat immense power has arguably made the court a leading player in enacting policy in the U.S,\u201d Pacelle wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt may also cause the loss of the court\u2019s legitimacy, which can be defined as popular acceptance of a government, political regime or system of governance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation\u2019s archives<\/em>.\"The<\/p>\n

Howard Manly<\/a>, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

==============================================================
\nAlecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>, it’s noteworthy that all the resistance seems to come from people – and parties – who profess their dedication to “law and order” – yet when it comes to actually administering law by applying the strongest legal decisions, suddenly they disappear. Or at least their commitment to “law and order” does. Eventually we who actually do believe in law and order, as well as facts, reason, and logic, are going to have to address this dissonance. Ignoring it is obviously not working.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3729],"class_list":["post-52615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-furies","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}