Conservative Justices Are Walking Into Their Own Trap
Today’s Supreme Court majority will struggle to defend the logic of its judicial activism if it overturns Roe v. Wade in the name of judicial restraint.
How far and how fast?
Photographer: Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty ImagesThe conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is ushering in a new era of judicial activism. But if it overturns the 1973 abortion-rights precedent Roe v. Wade, as it seems poised to do, the same majority is walking into a conceptual trap.
The case against Roe rests on nearly 50 years of conservative argument that the landmark decision was the culmination of a liberal generational failure to exercise judicial restraint, of creating constitutional rights unsupported by constitutional principles. Hence the contradiction: Today’s conservative majority appears ready to issue an epoch-making decision endorsing restraint as it enters a period of aggressive activism.