Jesus, Interrupted

I recently re-read Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman. The book is a useful summary of the subjects he covers in various books. 

You can read about the changing developments of Christianity, the changing of many verses in the copying, how you can have faith while still realizing the Bible is not inerrant, etc. in more detail in other works.  This book is a good one-volume summary along with his New Testament textbook (which I bought used).  

I also liked his note about how interpretation is not just some objective exercise. We are humans, not robots. This applies to other texts, including the U.S. Constitution.  He had an end note regarding this twice, including:

Of course when trying to understand these different points of views we need to engage in the work of interpretation. Contrary to what some people assume, texts don't speak for themselves. They must be interpreted. And this can never be done "objectively," as if we, the readers, were robots; texts are interpreted subjectively by human.

Prof. Eric Segall seems to think his comment that "values" are involved (significantly so) in legal interpretation is news.  It isn't.  

It is also not "values all the way down."  There are general rules, in both biblical analysis (Ehrman notes that a range of religious scholars will find his main points far from controversial) and legal analysis.  This still leads to a lot of significant room for dispute.  

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The Supreme Court handled three cases (four if you count the affirmative action cases separately) today.  Alito dealt with a trademark case that was unanimous though it split them some on reasoning.  He also had a religious employee accommodation case.  It was also unanimous.  

A 1970s case (by Justice White, not a strong separatist) allowed an arguably trivial burden to others to make accommodations not allowed.  The case was not overruled but clarified to not be so strict, at least possibly so.  The government (the case involved a postal employee) didn't really disagree.  How much this will change things will be determined.  

Alito therefore curiously was somewhat absent this term, even dissenting somewhat quietly in multiple cases.  The other case was the affirmative action matter.  Over two hundred pages of opinions, including dissent from both Sotomayor (70 pages) and Jackson (30, but over 100 footnotes), each joined by Kagan.  Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh (another brief "I'm reasonable" job) concurred.   Expected loss. 

The thing is that (and a few liberal-leaning law types have already suggested this) it is unclear how much the case was aside from all the noise.  Roberts noted military academies might have other concerns, so left them open for now.  And, it is not that race could never be used, especially indirectly.  Colleges will find ways to do it.  It will be harder and more litigation will follow.

The majority's noise will likely cause some problems, especially as a way to help the "anti-woke" brigade somehow.  But, in hard results, this is in no way as horrible as the abortion and gun rights cases of last term.  How much this is true will be disputed.  Clear enough there is a lot of bullshit.

And, damn, it would have been nice to hear the opinion announcements (multiple justices said their piece in the affirmative action cases) and saw them as well.  We shouldn't have to rely on reporting for things like this:

Justice Jackson stared straight ahead and seemed "visibly angry" as Justice Thomas read from his concurring opinion in the affirmative action cases, according to eyewitness @GaryGrumbach

— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 29, 2023

Anyway, almost done. 

ETA: As to the employee case, I saw even a lawyer involved with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (Andrew Seidel) on Twitter say the ruling did not really do much.  

Again, to be determined, and there are multiple cases this term that might later on turn out to be worse than they first seem.  He's just one person, but that is a notable one!

A lot more can be said about the affirmative action cases, but I'll just toss in that Gorsuch's concurrence emphasized (in his "it's so obvious" fashion) how the text of the civil rights law made race-based affirmative action a problem.  

This is far from clear, especially given how Congress basically accepted Bakke saying otherwise.  Prof. Victoria Nourse's argument about this post-passage gloss matter holds for me, especially since Congress actually used to be actively passing new law when it felt the Supreme Court got it wrong in the civil rights area.  

The dissents show that both the text (especially of the Fourteenth Amendment) and history can quite easily be applied in a liberal way. This is a common thing and it looks like Justice Jackson will be doing it a lot in the years to come.