Last week, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. At issue is Mississippi’s statute banning abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation; the law also notes milestones such as fetal heartbeat and organ function at even earlier stages of development. The case therefore challenges the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which in effect legalized abortion at any point in pregnancy and made abortion law a matter for the federal courts, rather than the state legislatures, by claiming that abortion was a right guaranteed by the federal Constitution.
Commentary about Dobbs has noted the Court’s so-called conservative Justices, though they’re probably more accurately described simply as those appointed by Republican Presidents. On one side are Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts; and on the other are Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
This political composition actually seems to resemble the country’s right now — or what we’re told the country is — which is to say, the Court is divided. That sounds bad, of course. One might just as well say that the Court is not monolithic, which sounds better.
The same cannot be said, however, of American legal education, the system which produces our judges.
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