I don't know about you, but my social media exploded in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to permit Hobby Lobby's moral objections to federal contraceptive mandates. Facebook became a stream of hyperbolic screaming and metaphoric eye gouging and smarmy, snarky, eye-roll-inducing attempts to be clever. Twitter fed me line after line of politicians and celebrities waxing philosophic, each more eager than the next to jump on the pro- or anti-SCOTUS bandwagon.
It was approximately the same level of fervor produced by the country's brief spate of success in the World Cup, and perhaps that's appropriate. One suspects that most Americans understand soccer about as well as they understand the finer points of jurisprudence.
Which is what made all the finger-wagging and cocksure posturing so galling.
The barriers to entry in politics are essentially rich friends and good orthodontics, so when a politician says something about a law, their opinion is undeniably debatable. The mental gymnastics through which a congressman or president interprets and applies power are politically motivated, open to question and painted exclusively in shades of gray.
(Sometimes 50 Shades of Grey, but let's leave Anthony Weiner out of this. Hey-oh!)
In contrast, the opinions of Supreme Court justices are -- what's the word -- informed. The nine individuals who comprise that body have all been to law school. They've distinguished themselves over long careers as top legal minds. Each won appointment over a pool of hyper-intelligent candidates whose defining characteristic was mental rigor.
That's not to say their decisions don't have political ramifications. The Hobby Lobby decision, for example, could force literally dozens of craft store employees to pay for their own Plan B every year.
The humanity.
In another recent decision of far greater consequence, the Supremes ruled that high-tech cloud computing company Aereo had to stop storing television shows online for its customers. It's a ruling that I wholeheartedly disagree with. I believe it will materially affect the development of future innovation. I believe it undoes much of the progress that's been made in copyright law. I believe it was shortsighted. But I also believe it was issued by six people who are a heck of a lot smarter than I am.
It's a recurring theme when it comes to the Supremes.
The decisions made by the Supreme Court are fair game for debate, to be sure. In fact, because they are so concrete -- here's the opinion, here's the dissent -- and because they are so well-thought-out and reasoned, SCOTUS rulings are possibly more fun to debate than other political topics. But because of who made those decisions and how they were decided upon, Supreme Court rulings deserve a much higher level of respect than other political discourse.
That's why the social media rancor regarding Hobby Lobby was difficult to stomach. How many of those armchair justices on Facebook do you suppose actually took the time to read the 49-page opinion of the court? How many perused the 35-page dissent? Heck, how many people even read the six-page syllabus that sketched the facts of the case? Dollars-to-dockets, I'd bet not many.
So as a general rule, when an idiot politician spouts-off about some issue with which you disagree, by all means, take to Twitter and let the bum have it. But no matter how wrong we consider a Supreme Court ruling to be, it doesn't change the fact that the institution remains a cut above our knee-jerk reproach. The quality and intelligence of the justices on the Court demand a more thoughtful response. The careful reasoning of the Supreme Court deserves more respect than a tweet can afford.
NATE STRAUCH IS A REPORTER AND COLUMNISTWITH THE SHERMAN-DENISON (TX) HERALD DEMOCRAT.
Commentary on 07/11/2014