Ship of Fools

Letter I sent to the American Bar Association today, disembarking from that ship of fools:

Please cancel my student membership in the ABA (ID #xxxxxxxx). I am appalled that the ABA Standing Committee has given its highest rating to Samuel Alito, who has distinguished himself in the past by holding that it was constitutional for police officers to strip search a ten-year-old girl and that married women should not be able to obtain abortions unless they can prove that they told their husbands of their plans beforehand. The latter opinion was particularly appalling intrusion into the privacy of both the abortion decision and the marital relationship, given that it endangers women in abusive relationships without serving any legitimate public purpose. As Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out when that opinion was appealed to the Supreme Court, the law has no place treating adult women like children; the marital relationship is not analogous to the parent/child relationship. Alito, however, seems to think it is. The irony of replacing O'Connor with Alito seems to have been lost on the ABA.

I am appalled that the ABA chose to overlook Alito's history: the man's opinions reveal him to be a petty tyrant bent on vaporizing every constitutional right that conflicts with his personal views. Is this what we need in a time when our civil liberties are already in peril? The ABA seems to think so, and I am therefore resigning in disgust.