There are few, apparently.

The Hill, a political newspaper in Washington, D.C., reported a couple of days ago that “Abortion rights activists in recent days have gathered outside the homes of three conservative Supreme Court justices to protest Roe v. Wade’s potential demise, taking their advocacy in an intensely personal and politically divisive direction.”

The homes are those of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. The article says the protests have “forced the White House to navigate a thorny question about the proper bounds of political discourse…” While outgoing press secretary Jen Psaki denounced threats of violence but stopped short of condemning the demonstrations—“We certainly allow for peaceful protest in a range of places in the country. None of it should violate the law,” she said.

But violating the law might be what they’re doing.  A friend of ours has pointed out Federal U.S. code 1507 that says any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined, or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

We’ll wait to see if the Justice Department steps in.

These protests, while posing some liability for the participants, are not likely to be severe enough to launch a May 9^th investigative committee.

But the circumstances do raise related issues about protests whether at courthouses, capitols, or street corners. Some are constitutional. Some are practical.

We have witnessed a lot of protests in a lot of years, including the storming of the local newspaper by Lincoln University students upset about an editorial highly-critical of Martin Luther King just days before his death, and disturbances on the campus (Lincoln in an HBCU, for those unfamiliar with the school) for a couple of years that resulted in a National Guard presence.

We have seen people standing quietly in front of the post office holding signs urging us to get out of Vietnam, Afghanistan, the United Nations, etc.

Many years ago when gay rights was in a much earlier stage we remember seeing members of a group called ACT-UP! Marching around the state seal in the Capitol rotunda chanting, “You say ‘don’t f—k,’ we say ‘f—k you!”’  That pretty well ended organized political protests in the Capitol.

We watched the Medicaid 23 interrupt Senate debate on Medicaid expansion one day with prayers and songs. They wound up being charged and dragged into court.

Prayers, cursing, burning, quietly holding signs are all part of our rights as American citizens to protest. It’s right there in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So protesting grievances is an inborn right of Americans. The accompanying responsibility for doing so in a way that does not violate the word “peaceably” belongs to the demonstrators and the subjective judgment of what is beyond propriety lies with the justice system that has the U.S. Code on one hand and the First Amendment on the other.  .

Attached to that system is another value judgment that lies with the protesters: Will the event do harm or good to the causes of the protestors?

Frankly, we doubt demonstrations at the Supreme Court building  influence the opinion-makers inside the building very much if at all.  We do find targeting the private spaces of the judges by demonstrating at their homes is an unwarranted invasion of their lives and certainly the lives of their families and their neighbors.

Your quiet observer doesn’t even like it when a car goes slowly through my neighborhood with the bass turned all the way up in the large speakers in the backseat and shakes the windows of his house.

In our fervid proclamations of our rights, it is easy to overlook the responsible, reasonable, and respectful exercise of them. Trying to use statements of our rights as bludgeons doesn’t seem from this lofty view to be a responsible action to take.

But what is left when leaders appear to be unmotivated by the responsible, the reasonable, and the respectful?

Whatever it is, it must be a principle of our freedoms that the mob cannot be allowed to rule. It can express itself.  But decisions must be made in cooler surroundings than on the passionate streets.  And the likely best decisions are most often made in the quiet regardless of whether they please us.

Decisions by the courts can be protested in the courts with better arguments than those shouted outside the fences that protect the decision-makers.