Chief Justice Roberts Confirms Authenticity of Leaked Dobbs Draft Opinion
“In a statement released on Tuesday morning, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of a draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that would overturn the precedents set in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.” - N.Review
Related, from The Dispatch (podcast): Making Sense of the Supreme Court Leak
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Key point: SCOTUS has a history of turning majority opinions into dissenting opinions. It isn’t decided until it’s decided. The podcost has some interesting thoughts on what the sequence of events. French thinks Thomas might be writing/have written a concurring opinion that the 14th amendment not only doesn’t support abortion but prohibits it. Apparently, there’s an amibus brief.
Lots of speculation about court inner workings, but it’s interesting. Solid factual stuff along the way. Also some close analysis of the actual opinion, even a couple of footnotes, including one where Alito says abortion may or may not have been motivated by eugenics but has certainly had a disproportionate effect on the black population.
We’ll see what really happens when it happens.
Also worth a read:
The Roe Leak Spotlights America’s Crisis of Credibility
And some good stuff here at Breakpoint: https://colsoncenter.libsyn.com/justice-alitos-leaked-opinion
TGC: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/roe-dead/
A good short summary at P&D: Reacting to the Supreme Court Leak
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Unless someone owns up to the leak, there’s no way to be sure of the motivation. Perhaps someone wanted to rile up the public into pressuring the justices to change their minds.
This leak is all the liberal press is talking about. It will serve in the next few months to change the subject from everything the liberals don’t want to talk about (everything else is a mess for them) to a topic that a good portion of the country still thinks they’re on the right side of. I don’t know the motive, but if it’s to change the main topic of the midterm elections, it was genious.
If Hilary Clinton had won the 2016 election, we would not be talking about a Supreme Court leak or the possibility of overturning the Roe v Wade decision.
Wally Morris
Huntington, IN
I don’t think ‘leaked by the left to distract’ makes sense as a strategy. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But it only draws attention away from some of their problems to another one of their problems, as far as that goes… and the court was expected to rule in June anyway, so all the distraction factors were going to be there either anyway. Not much of a payoff for an illegal act that is probably going to eventually get someone in really hot water.
It makes slightly more sense that a conservative (or what we call conservatives these days) leaked it to try to make it harder for the court to change it’s mind. Lock it in. But this is only slightly better, since it could easily do the opposite.
Maybe the best theory is that a liberal leaked it to try to garner a massive public protest ahead of the ruling and get a justice or two to flip.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Joeb]If we remember all those 3 Judges LIED to the senate where they stood on Roe vs Wade.
Did Supreme Court Nominees Lie to Congress?
The truth is available to anyone willing to call up the C-Span archives. Justice Gorsuch said in his 2017 confirmation hearings that Roe “is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was reaffirmed in Casey in 1992 and in several other cases. So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.” In another exchange, Justice Gorsuch said he would have “walked out the door” if President Trump had asked him to commit to overturning Roe. That’s “not what judges do.”
Justice Kavanaugh during the 2018 spectacle that passed as his confirmation hearings noted that Roe had been “reaffirmed many times.” He also declined to prejudge cases. “You have an open mind. You get the briefs and arguments. And some arguments are better than others. Precedent is critically important. It is the foundation of our system. But you listen to all arguments.”
Justice Barrett’s 2020 hearings featured a discussion about the academic concept of “super precedent,” essentially whether a matter is so settled no one challenges it. “I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe,” she said, “which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall into that category.”
She declined to pre-commit to ruling one way or another on abortion, but she did say in deciding whether to overrule any precedent, she’d apply the legal framework of stare decisis (“to stand by things decided”).
Discussion