Samuel Alito Is the Model of a Principled Justice
Does anyone imagine that Harriet Miers would be a better justice than Samuel Alito?
If the name isn’t exactly familiar I’ll catch you up on some recent history. Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee, announced her intention to vacate the court in 2005. It fell to George W Bush to fill the seat. An ostensibly conservative seat, O’Connor was known for her waffle-y decisions. She voted with the court liberals and upheld abortion in Planned Parenthood v Casey.
This was Bush’s second seat to fill and in the words of the Templar Knight guarding the holy grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade “He chose poorly.”
Recent History
Conservatives were in no mood for a ‘trust me guys’ appointment to the court. They’d seen too many stalwarts become occasional liberals once ensconced in the highest seat. Here comes Bush with a functionary, Miers. She went to law school (Stanford) but lacked a heavy case load from which to reason about her effectiveness. Needless to say it went south quickly. She removed her name and the administration got smart and picked a true defender of the constitution, Samuel Alito.
He’s been the perfect justice in the best way. He’s reliable and smart, but not a ‘genius’ like Roberts. The Chief Justice was always seen as a once in a lifetime legal mind, someone who would shame Aristotle. But Roberts is exhibit A in why we don’t need brilliant people on the court. We need principled judges with a clear understanding of the constitution’s restrictive nature. A long record and the correct interpretation is the only way to pick. It’s possible that Miers would have been a great choice too, but her nomination was risky.
Alito was a concrete choice because Bush couldn’t afford another poor one.
Alito won’t reinvent the wheel but he will stand on principles. He also won’t get lost in his own genius like the Chief Justice and write half measured opinions, Obamacare anyone? Even in the most recent case he ruled in favor of the Mississippi law but disagreed with overruling Roe.
Sound Reasoning
“The constitution does not confer a right to abortion”. That’s always been true. Samuel Alito finally put it in his opinion today on why the court overruled Roe v Wade. It’s a straightforward opinion from the justice who is the model for future picks on the court. I can’t read too far into court opinions on case law before I doze off like an 8 week old retriever that’s been run around the block. Latin phrasing and legal logic are not my forte, but in such a monumental case I’ll try to keep up.
Samuel Alito did two important things in overturning the Roe v Wade debacle. First, he threw out the shaky reasoning for all time that abortion was always based on. There is no inherent right to privacy (Roe) or a right to avoid an “undue burden” (Casey) that extend to abortion. The foundations were a combination of misunderstood legal opinions and historical inaccuracy.
Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law). After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.
The second and practical thing he did was dump this whole mess on the states, which is where is should have been in the first place. From the beginning SCOTUS had to draw time lines around trimesters and viability. Progress in scientific breakthroughs make these difficult legal problems to rule on. Hospitals can keep pre-born babies alive at much younger states of development than before. So what does viable mean and should the court really be changing standards of phrases and interpreting stages of life?
He sums up this line of reasoning “The court has neither the authority nor the expertise to adjudicate those disputes...”
Mississippi's Law
The case before the court (Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization) was whether or not Mississippi could limit abortions to 15 weeks. State officials really wanted the court to toss out Roe altogether and allow the states to put forth their own laws. Or in some cases, ban the practice altogether. Jackson Women’s Health Organization wanted Mississippi’s limit on abortions to be lifted. Lower courts had agreed with the abortion provider and struck down earlier appeals.
Alito and the other conservatives on the court (Thomas, Cavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney-Barrett) saw a chance to undue an egregious error.
The Left is upset by the lack of respect for stare decisis but doesn’t see the irony in Roe being enacted without any previous legal cases allowing it. The best they could find is opinions in legal journals and a concocted right to privacy that supposedly extends to the unborn child. Alito makes an excellent case the Roe v Wade was such a stretch that no decision prior to the ruling could be pointed to. To the contrary, 46 states had laws that criminalized abortion “however and wherever performed”. Some made exceptions for to save the “life of the mother” should it be necessary.
Conclusion
For all the complaining from the 3 Left wing justices about tossing out precedent, their logic is laughable. Alito thinks so too. “The dissent argues that we’ve abandoned stare decisis but we’ve done no such thing, and it’s the dissent’s understanding of stare decisis that breaks with tradition.”
In other words, Roe v Wade was concocted more than interpreted. The opinion from Samuel Alito shows why a solid understanding of the constitution and moral center is better than a genius pick any day.
He’s been waiting a long time to write this opinion; we’ve been waiting a long time to read it.
Thankfully the Right held out for a better option than Harriett Miers.
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