Precedential Debate
I appreciated Margaret Talbot’s article about Amy Coney Barrett, and her discussion of stare decisis, the legal principle that guides judges to defer to precedents set by courts (“Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game,” February 14th & 21st). In the context of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion-rights case that currently sits before the Supreme Court, adherence to stare decisis would lead the Court to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. Talbot notes that Barrett described stare decisis as “not an inexorable command,” while Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor voiced concern about the ramifications of overturning prior rulings.
Though I share their wariness, ignoring precedent is not always a bad thing. Qualified immunity, a doctrine that was established by the Supreme Court in 1967, shields public officials accused of violating constitutional rights from civil lawsuits in all but the rarest cases, and has arguably allowed perpetrators of police brutality to evade accountability. Opponents of qualified immunity deride the principle as having been created by the Court out of whole cloth—an argument that mirrors one often employed by critics of Roe who are dismissive of its legal basis. Passing legislation banning qualified immunity at this time would require a level of bipartisan coöperation that Congress is unlikely to summon. For those of us who wish to see qualified immunity abolished, the prospect that the Court will one day disregard the precedents that created it is our greatest hope.
Jason Schlabach
Cincinnati, Ohio
Joyce’s Music
In her fascinating piece about “Ulysses,” James Joyce’s modernist epic, Merve Emre describes the “thrill” of hearing the actress Pegg Monahan give voice to Molly Bloom in Irish Radio’s 1982 audio production of the novel (Books, February 14th & 21st). I can attest to that enjoyment wholeheartedly. Growing up in Dublin, I had long been intimidated by “Ulysses.” When RTÉ aired its twenty-nine-hour-and-forty-five-minute dramatization, it felt like a liberation. The voices of the actors—thirty-three of them in all, playing more than four hundred parts—brought Joyce’s astonishing prose, with its interior monologues and layers of meaning, truly alive for me. It’s as if Joyce wrote the novel to be listened to, like music, rather than to be read. The recording, now accessible on the RTÉ Web site, has been my companion ever since. The book is on my shelf, to be consulted now and then, but the ears have it.
John O’Byrne
Dublin, Ireland
Out of the Mines
I enjoyed Alec MacGillis’s appraisal of the German government’s plans to phase out coal (“Brown Out,” February 7th). Germany’s efforts to transition to a renewable economy set an example for other countries, whose commitment on this front is sorely needed. I would have been interested, however, to hear about whether Germany’s closed mines leak methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and, if so, how that problem is being addressed. In western Colorado, where I live, researchers have found that abandoned bituminous-coal mines leak a large amount of methane; some estimate that in Pitkin County, where Aspen is situated, fugitive methane from abandoned mines accounts for more than half of the county’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions. When you consider the number of jets using the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, and the many enormous houses in the area that rely on fossil fuels, the scale of this output is especially disturbing.
Illène Pevec
Carbondale, Colo.
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