The end of Roe, and how individuals became political in the Supreme Court

In In 1921, future Supreme Court judge Benjamin Cardzo published a book examining how judges would write their opinions. I have written. He argued that the jurisprudence's opinion did not merely reflect this and its legal theory, but also the judge who wrote it. "All their lives," writes Cardozo. "The power they don't recognize and can't name has pulled them. Inherited instincts, traditional beliefs, acquired beliefs. The result is a life outlook." He added: When

Roearrived at the Supreme Court 50 years later, the judge asked how something other than the law shaped their opinion. There is no longer a tendency to argue about Taka. Luis Powell did not reveal a few years ago that a teenage messenger from a Virginia law firm came to him for help after killing her girlfriend in a tort. .. Her young man took her to her abortion provider, who has since been charged with manslaughter. Powell later told the clerk that this double tragedy was the reason for the majority ofRoe. "I don't want to live in the country," he said. As such, you are forced to go to a butcher shop in the back alley. Meanwhile, Harry Blackmun worked as a lawyer at the Mayo Clinic when the judge, who wrote the majority ofRoe, met a woman who was severely injured by an illegal abortion. .. But he didn't say anything publicly about them, just as he said nothing about his daughter, who was derailed by an unwanted pregnancy in college in 1966.

If the judge fails to publicly disclose these experiences, Blackman in the preamble ofRoe, people form an opinion about abortion based on exposure to abortion. He insisted that it was often the case. It is called the "raw edge of human existence." He was right. Abortion has not yet been overtaken by politics. In fact, both Powell and Blackman were nominated in court by Republican Richard Nixon, and their fellow judge Byron White, who opposed the legalization of abortion, was nominated by Democrat John Kennedy. Senator Ted Kennedy, Kennedy's younger brother, also opposed the abortion, which he described as an insult to Catholicism.

Therefore, there was still room in this country for what Cardoso called the "convictions he had won." And over the years, politicians continued to acquire beliefs that violated the party's ideology. Ronald Reaganapproved a background check for gun buyersafter the spokesman was shot dead. Dick Cheney favored a gay marriage after his daughter came out. John McCain co-sponsored an amendment to prevent torture years after he himself was tortured. And Joe Biden, a traditional Catholic, upheld the idea of ​​a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to overthrow Law. "I'm probably a victim, or a product, but you want to say that, but I have my background," he explained. Experience the devastated politics.

But when it comes to abortion, politics has increasingly defeated the experience.

Abortion politicization began beforeRoe1971 In the year Nixon faced this problem after his adviser Pat Buchanan proposed to do so in order to win a Catholic vote. The following year, a referendum in Michigan raised the issue of abortion on ballots throughout the state. However, abortion did not begin to become a partisan issue until 1975, when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan upheld the "purpose" of humanity modification, which recognizes the humanity of the fetus. The National Life Rights Commission, led by Dr. Mildred Jefferson, who helped bring Reagan into the pro-life frame, demanded that other presidential candidates take the position of amendments, thereby causing an abortion.New York Times, "One of the main issues in the 1976 presidential election." The two parties responded by adopting an abortion position in the official platform.

By 1980, Republicans actively took advantage of abortion to bring not only Catholics but also newly formed evangelical votes to court. And after Reagan was elected president, he decided that a federal judge, rather than the law, provided a clearer path to defeatRoe. In 1984, when the legal advocacy group Americans United for Life held a press conference to "reverse theRoe v. Wade casein court," he appointed more than 100 people. did.

However, the judge himself could not be so clear. This was clear when Reagan nominated Robert Bork of the Supreme Court in 1987. The judge calledRoe"a completely unjustified deprivation of the legislature's authority." "Robert Bork's America is a country where women are forced to have an abortion in the back alleys," Ted Kennedy, who became a pro-choice. After the Senate refused to nominate Balk, the Senate's confirmation hearing not only became "Roe's agent," as one journalist called them, but they thought nothing. Judgment became a charade leaving to be a judge to pretend not to.

More scrutiny by the judge meant that there was less room to express personal beliefs about abortion. For personal beliefs, as Cardozo wrote, judges will remind the public that they are not only humans with a life outlook, but may also be considered more political. Nevertheless, in 1992, the court was involved in five abortion regulations Planned Parenthood v. As in Casey, we were able to transcend the politics of abortion. The Supreme Court has eight Republican appointees and Byron White has maintained a legitimate abortion by viability, which is at the heart of Roe.

One of the eight was Sandra Day O'Connor. The first female judge in court and three married mothers, she and her newly retired colleague Thurgood Marshall, the first black judge, were her and her companions in the same year. I wrote about the impact on the judge. "Marshall Justice," she wrote in. .. So O'Connor did. Not surprisingly, in Casey, one abortion regulation that helped her write down regulated multiple opinions that she had overthrown a married woman who needed the consent of her husband. It is about. She noted her opinion that "women do not lose their constitutionally protected freedoms when they get married."

The conservatives were indignant. In particular, George Bush's candidate, Judge David Souter, defeated both O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy and helped coordinate theCaseydecision. (Souter argued in the words ofCaseythat he would overturn the precedent for as long as Roe would "surrender to political pressure.") "No More Souters" is conservative. I was screaming. And today, thirty years later, the Supreme Court reflects that. In fact, Dobbsv said thatdefeated Roe. In the opinion of the Jackson Women ’s Health Organization, all but one justice voted in line with party policy.

Cardozo had a hard time admitting the court he once served. Both have been overtaken by politics for 111 years after he observed that the judge and his opinion were under the control of life as well as law.

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