AVOIDING HARM
Two stories about avoiding harm, here and here. The first harm was avoided through luck, the second harm was avoided through procedure. . .
MORE: Compare these quotes:
"I'm just glad no one was sitting on the couch because they would have got absolutely crowned," Mrs Archer said.(From the BBC story linked above.)
and
When hard questions of domestic relations are sure to affect the outcome, the prudent course is for the federal court to stay its hand rather than reach out to resolve a weighty question of federal constitutional law. (From the final paragraph of Stevens's opinion, here.)
3 Comments:
I'm not sure how the second case is about avoiding harm. I agree that the court's decision is technically right. But when a father loses legal custody of his daughter, shouldn't he still have a reasonable degree of moral custody over her? Isn't it harmful to fathers' rights to treat a father this way?
Harm to the Court itself. Tough to tell for sure, of course, but don't you think that the fear of that harm partly explains why some of the Justices signed on to the majority opinion?
You're probably right. Of the four who wrote opinions, none confine themselves to writing only about the issue of custody though. So the other judges may have signed on because they concurred with the custody issue and/or the religious issue. Hard to say.
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