Comment by Waterluvian
2 months ago
This protection is not provided by judges or the Bill of Rights. It’s provided by the attitude and behaviours of all Americans. If enough Americans start treating 1A as conditional, the court decisions will slowly start reflecting that. The system won’t protect the people from themselves.
Yeah, but slowly is an understatement. Scotus judges serve until death, and they're appointed rather than elected. Even then, they're allowed to make very unpopular decisions.
That presumes that SCOTUS represents the "general" attitudes of all Americans. But when they overturned Roe v. Wade, they explicitly went against the majority consensus of Americans.
General != majority, but SCOTUS is not a gauge of American opinion. Perhaps a better example is Brown v. Board of Education, at a time when a very large portion of the public was not in favor of integrating the races in public schools.
TL;DR: Protection is absolutely provided by the courts, which is the highest authority on what the Constitution (and Amendments) and other laws mean.