Was still waiting to hear more on the SCOTUS leak of Alito’s draft opinion to Politico. Pulled up Hullabaloo. I was reading Digby post tonight “Oh my, look who’s leaking (again).” It caught my attention, you think??? It isn’t a Liberal . . . I am still guessing “Ginni” ratted to Politico. The Washington Post Reporting: The leaked draft of Alito’s opinion is dated February 10 and is almost surely obsolete now, as justices have had time to offer critiques, dissents and revisions. But as of last week, the five-member majority to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.A person close to the court’s most conservative
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run75441 considers the following as important: Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas, Hot Topics, John Roberts, law, politics, Roe V Wade, SCOTUS
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Was still waiting to hear more on the SCOTUS leak of Alito’s draft opinion to Politico. Pulled up Hullabaloo. I was reading Digby post tonight “Oh my, look who’s leaking (again).” It caught my attention, you think???
It isn’t a Liberal . . .
I am still guessing “Ginni” ratted to Politico.
The Washington Post Reporting:
The leaked draft of Alito’s opinion is dated February 10 and is almost surely obsolete now, as justices have had time to offer critiques, dissents and revisions. But as of last week, the five-member majority to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
A person close to the court’s most conservative members said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that left Roe and Casey in place for now. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.
Digby, I don’t think we need anything more to know that conservatives are trying to pressure Roberts. In fact, that second paragraph indicates that a conservative Justice shared what was said in a private conference and then whoever they told leaked it to the press.
So Republicans need to shut the f*ck up about the leak.
The rest of the story . . . . (Yahoo or Washington Post)
WASHINGTON — The explosive leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade not only focused the nation on the magnitude of the change facing abortion rights, it also signaled the rise of a rightward-moving court testing the power of fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts.
As the country awaits a final decision, the intense deliberations inside a court closed to the public and shaken by revelations of its private negotiations appears to be not between the court’s right and left, but among the six conservative justices, including Roberts, in the court’s supermajority.
The mere existence of the draft indicated that five justices had voted at least tentatively to reject Roberts’s incremental approach to restricting abortion rights. Instead, they would reverse Roe after nearly 50 years of guaranteeing a right to abortion that could not be outlawed by the states.
Overturning Roe v Wade
The fact that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. authored the draft is a sign Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s longest-serving member and the only one to write that he would overturn Roe, asserted his seniority to choose who would get the job. In Alito’s more than 16 years on the Supreme Court, he has supported every government restriction on abortion that has come before him.
It is another signal that the 67-year-old Roberts, hailed by scholars just a few years ago as one of the most powerful chief justices in history, is not in control of the process as the court readies its most influential decision in decades.
There is also reason to believe Roberts has not given up. Many who know him well and have watched his maneuvering of the court through other issues are certain he is still preparing his own opinion in hopes he might draw at least one of the court’s newest conservatives to his side. Such an outcome might save 1973′s Roe and the subsequent affirming 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, while severely limiting their protections . . .
Roberts has sometimes sided with the liberals in some of those disputes, particularly when he thought the authority or reputation of the court was at stake.
You can read the rest of it at the link(s) provided above (Yahoo) or at Washington Post.
I believe we have some serious issues with a right -wing SCOTUS leading us down a path which will reverse and negate decisions decades old. This is not just about Roe v. Wade, it concerns me the court is willing to regress in a fashion threatening the very fabric of society decades in the making using an originalist doctrine.
The reasoning of Roe, a 7-2 decision repeatedly reaffirmed by the court, was not weak. For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy. Prior to Roe, the court had protected liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to use contraception, the right to control the upbringing of children and the right of every person to choose “whether to bear or beget a child.”
But this is only one decision. There were many other decisions made since Roe v. Wade. On Sunday, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) suggested “it is not just 50 years of rights endangered. In his leaked opinion, Justice Alito is not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to 1850s. Justice Alito actually cites the fact that abortion was criminalized back when the 14th Amendment was adopted.”
As Dean and constitutional attorney Erwin Chemerinsky posits “For decades before Roe, the Supreme Court held that the liberty of the due process clause protected the fundamental aspects of privacy and autonomy.”
We are in for a rough ride.