The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade has highlighted the growing power of its conservative majority and raised questions about the extent to which it could reconsider precedents on other social issues such as contraception and same-sex marriage.
The ruling on Friday upheld a Mississippi state law banning abortion after 15 weeks, and then went one step further to overturn the 1973 Roe decision that has enshrined the constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 weeks. years.
Judge Samuel Alito, author of the majority opinion, said Roe’s decision had been “enormously wrong from the start,” expressing the view of many conservative jurists and activists who have fought for decades to overturn it.
“It’s time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to elected representatives of the people,” he added, in a decision joined by his fellow Conservatives Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court ruling, but not the broader majority opinion.
Roe’s dismissal came a day after another divisive ruling in which the court overturned a centennial New York state law requiring a person to show “proper cause” for carrying a concealed handgun in public, considering the unconstitutional statute.
“In a 24-hour period, the Supreme Court ruled, on the one hand, that abortion rights are a local issue that must be decided by each state independently, while on the other, the states they are prohibited from making local decisions about how to regulate weapons, ”Katherine said. Franke, a professor at Columbia Law School.
Taken together, the rulings illustrate how the court’s strong Conservative majority, consolidated by former President Donald Trump’s three appointments, has increasingly been encouraged to take radical rulings on some of the country’s most partisan issues, rather than of finding a more limited or technical way to solve them. issues.
Michele Goodwin, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said the court in its decision Friday accepted “Mississippi’s invitation to free the country from a national right … so these issues they will now move on to something closer to the time we had in American slavery, where there were free states and there were states where people … independence. [and] freedom was not recognized ”.
The abortion decision also demonstrates the dwindling power of John Roberts as a moderating influence of his more conservative colleagues.
In the past, Roberts seemed anxious to negotiate decisions that would prevent seismic changes on divisive social issues, such as the 5-4 ruling that upheld former President Barack Obama’s health care law. But its ability to serve as a variable vote has diminished as the conservative wing of the court has grown.
While agreeing with his colleagues’ judgment in favor of Mississippi law, Roberts said he would have preferred a “measured course” that would have kept Roe in his place while rejecting a rule articulated in that decision, and a later case stating so. Planned Parenthood vs. Casey: Abortion was allowed until a fetus was considered “viable” or able to survive outside the womb.
“The court’s decision to overturn Roe and Casey is a serious shock to the legal system, regardless of how you view these cases,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts’ request for “judicial restraint” comes amid a deep crisis of court authority that was exacerbated by the unusual leaking of the draft opinion on the abortion case in early May.
During oral arguments about the Mississippi case last year, Judge Sonia Sotomayor asked, “Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?”
In his dissent, the court’s liberal wing denounced many of the ruling’s findings, including “undermining the court’s legitimacy.” . .[and] it betrays its guiding principles ”.
A Gallup poll released earlier this week showed that public confidence in the court had fallen to historic lows, with only a quarter of Americans saying they had faith in the institution, below 36 % of 2021. Part of the disapproval comes from a dissonance. between court decisions such as the one handed down on Friday and public opinion. Most Americans were opposed to overthrowing Roe.
The ruling has also called into question what the court can do if cases are brought before it that seek to overturn other previously recognized personal rights.
“No one should trust that this majority is finished with their work,” the dissenting judges wrote. “The right that Roe and Casey recognized is not in itself,” they said, noting “other established freedoms that involve bodily integrity, family relationships and procreation.”
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The Conservative majority downplayed these concerns, saying they were “designed to fuel the unfounded fear that our decision would jeopardize these other rights.”
But Thomas, in a concurring opinion, wrote that the court should “reconsider” other decisions based on similar principles, including rulings on same-sex marriage and intimacy, as well as contraception, as such legal thinking was “demonstrably wrong.”
He went further and added: “After overturning these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain as to whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the infinity of rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.”
Franke of Columbia Law School noted that it was unclear how many other court judges supported Thomas’ views, as no one else had joined his opinion. But she added, “It used to be very atypical on the track and it’s not.”