Ball Is In People’s Court

America shows that judiciary cannot guarantee rights if politics turns polarised

- Arghya Sengupta

Following World War II, the United States of America anointed itself the leader of “the free world”, committed to planting the flag of democracy globally. Much of this global positioning was facilitated by a celebration of its constitution.

The constitution, though written in dense legal prose, enshrined the concepts of liberty, equality and freedom. Nourished by a powerful Supreme Court and gushing popular culture portrayals, it became the global gold standard for constitutional documents.

The judgment of the US SC in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, declaring that there is no fundamental right in the constitution for women to undergo abortions, overturning the 49-year-old judgment in Roe vs Wade, has been widely viewed as undermining America’s liberal rights record globally. But this is a misstatement.

The judgment in Dobbs takes the shroud off an uncomfortable truth – that the US constitution has for long functioned as a cover for a country that continues to hold many medieval understandings of freedom and civilisation.

Not always the land of the free:The framers of the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal yet, without any irony, slaves were only counted as three-fifths of a human being in the constitution. Not only is the American democratic experiment riven with such contradictions, but it is also a long-standing global outlier when it comes to basic human rights norms.