Category: studio

Moira Donegan in Conversation with Merve Emre on The Critic and Her Publics; New York Review and Lithub.

“In this sentence—“that a new majority, adhering to a new ‘doctrinal school,’ could ‘by dint of numbers’ alone expunge their rights”—that “dint of numbers” is a scathing phrase. Justices on the Supreme Court are not as mean to one another as I sometimes, as a court observer, would hope they would be. When there is a pointed line like that, it’s something to pay attention to. She’s saying what we all know, which is that the law does not support this decision, the facts do not support this decision, the will of the people does not support this decision, and the spirit of our constitution does not support this decision. You are not doing it because you have real legitimacy to do it. I think that’s a tricky conundrum we find ourselves in as feminists and as Americans: we’re facing organs of political power that cannot be moved by threats to their legitimacy, that are content to be seen as illegitimate in the eyes of the public so long as they have numbers.”