When someone at the United States Supreme Court leaked a draft of an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito regarding the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters flew into a rage.
The Huffington Post reported, “Activists protesting against the Supreme Court’s expected ruling gutting Roe v. Wade gathered outside the homes of two conservative justices over the weekend and plan to do so again later this week.
Close to 100 protesters chanted and waved signs Saturday evening outside the Maryland house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then marched to the nearby home of Chief Justice John Roberts.”
Some who support this disgraceful activity remind us that peaceful protests are a guaranteed right, and that is true, to a point.
The obvious intent of these gatherings is to intimidate the justices into changing their position on the constitutional question before them, and allow Roe to stand.
According to an article on the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) website, “Protesters outside Brett M. Kavanaugh’s house warned the Supreme Court justice this weekend, ‘If you take away our choices, we will riot.’ They marched on Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s home chanting ‘Abort the court!’ and stood outside the home of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (who apparently did not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade) yelling ‘The whole world is watching!’”
This outlandish behavior smacks of attempts at “vigilante justice,” or mob rule on what is a matter of constitutional law. And, more importantly, these “protests,” however peaceful they may or may not be, are against the law.
The AEI article continues: “This is not just noxious behavior; it is illegal. Federal law — Section 1507 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code — clearly states that it is unlawful to protest near a ‘residence occupied or used by [a] judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ with the intent of influencing ‘the discharge of his duty,’ adding that anyone who ‘uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’”
If people want to protest on behalf of some cause on which the Court is going to rule, they may peacefully protest legally outside the Supreme Court building.
Protests in front of the homes of judges, justices, and others involved in legal decisions is expressly outlawed because of the need for these people to make their decisions absent intimidation. Further, this chaos is also a problem for neighbors, who are unfairly subjected to unwanted noise, and other negative aspects of these illegal gatherings.
So, while both federal law and some state laws forbid this behavior, why is it still going on? And more importantly, why has there been no law enforcement action to arrest these criminals? Why is the Department of Justice failing to respond to these illegal activities?
After all, an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh was recently discovered and stopped. And, a former judge was recently killed in his home by a person he sent to prison years earlier. These illegal gatherings are threats to the safety of the justices and their families.
Yet, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sits complacently in his office more worried about the non-whipping of people illegally crossing the southern border, and the actions of parents concerned about the education of their children in tax-supported schools at boards of education meetings.
And President Joe Biden has been strangely quiet about this development. Biden has said publicly that we need to “stop treating our opponents as our enemy.” And in his inaugural address, he vowed to “end this uncivil war,” and bring America together. And yet, he has said and done nothing about this disgraceful development.
This failure on the part of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and others with authority to act against this illegal behavior seems to be part of the recent epidemic of so-called “progressive” thought on justice and the law.
There has been a rash of district attorneys and prosecutors across the country who were elected or appointed to enforce laws and who somehow believe they have the authority to ignore whichever laws they so choose. In doing this, they place the rights and concerns of criminals above the rights and concerns of their victims, and of innocent Americans.
Criminals are not prosecuted to the fullest, or sometimes hardly at all, and they often commit additional crimes. Two Los Angeles police officers were recently ambushed and killed by a career criminal who was given light treatment by District Attorney George Gascon. The killer should have been in jail, and would have been if he had been treated appropriately by Gascon.
People are plainly breaking the law in protesting at justices’ homes, trying to intimidate them to rule a certain way, and no one is doing anything about it. That is not acceptable.
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