Posted on May 29, 2019 by Scott Johnson
The abortion quagmire
The Supreme Court’s decision constitutionalizing the alleged right to abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) was about as bad as it gets. Expressing the Court’s sheer will to power, it is one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
The principled liberal law professor John Hart Ely called out the Court in the classic Yale Law Journal comment “The Wages of Crying Wolf.†Professor Ely condemned Roe as “a very bad decision. Not because it will perceptibly weaken the Court-it won’t; and not because it conflicts with either my idea of progress or what the evidence suggests is society’s-it doesn’t. It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be'†.
Yet Roe lives on. Indeed, the Court continued in this mode — seizing from state legislatures the power that properly belongs to them — as long as Justice Kennedy was around to develop his jurisprudence à la Walt Whitman and Song of Myself: “I and this mystery here we stand.†If the Supreme Court is ever to climb down from this particular ledge, it is sure to do so in some incremental fashion.
more
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/the-abortion-quagmire.php
