To the editor: Is the rule of law adjudicated by reason or by political prejudice?
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued four rulings on highly political issues, from lawsuits against cancer-causing pesticides and carrying guns onto private properties to blocking asylum seekers and expelling immigrants under temporary protection status (“Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller,” “Gun owners may carry a weapon into stores, Supreme Court rules, rejecting a California law,” “Asylum seekers may be turned away at the southern border, Supreme Court rules,” “Trump may end legal protection for 350,000 Haitians and Syrians, Supreme Court rules,” June 25). The very same 6-3 majority was obtained in three of these cases. The pesticide case was 7-2, with one crossover from the usual minority.
Our Constitution was written during the so-called Age of Reason, when religious and political prejudice were to be set aside in favor of purely interpretive rationality. Or so our founders believed. But the court has seemingly gone against this entirely.
The flurry of 6-3 decisions shows how the court has become a political body, not the judicial one the founders of our Constitution sorely aspired to. So much the worse for impartial reason.
David Glidden, Riverside
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To the editor: After the Supreme Court’s decision on asylum seekers, there’s now the need to rewrite the Emma Lazarus sonnet on the Statue of Liberty. I have taken the liberty of rewriting its most famous passage:
Give me your white, your rich
And not your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
Nor the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost not to me,
because I lift my lamp beside Trump’s golden door
Johanna Felder, Laguna Beach
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To the editor: A Supreme Court decision just overturned the law establishing a default no-carry policy for guns in businesses. It would seem a lot less hypocritical if the court had also ruled that barring guns from courts were also unconstitutional. Judges have the benefit of working in a gun-free environment while making it more difficult for everyone else to enjoy the same.
Tom Russ, El Segundo
