Why Alito?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Let's talk tea leaves here. It seems like literally any other justice in the Dobbs majority could have produced a controlling opinion that was at least a little better than what we ended up with, from one perspective or another. Thomas and Gorsuch would have produced bizarre, extreme opinions, but ones that would have "ripped the band-aid off" and leaned at least a little bit more towards legal and moral theory and less towards ideological diatribe than Alito's ultimately did. Barrett would have had the best optics. Kavanaugh's (disingenuously) conciliatory and apologetic writing style might have won the decision more public acceptance and/or a sixth vote from Roberts, who, as we all know, concurred in judgment anyway. And yet instead of assigning the majority opinion to any of these people, even himself, Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was? After a few people have posted, I'll share my own thoughts.

[NewYorkExpress]

It's probable that that other five conservatives just weren't interested in compromising with Roberts.

As for why Alito? I doubt Thomas wanted to write the opinion himself. But if overturning Roe and Casey was the end result all along, then he should have assigned the opinion to Coney Barrett for optics reasons.

[politicallefty]

I have to admit I was absolutely not expecting Alito to have the Dobbs opinion. He does seem to get a disproportionate share of "stick it to the libs" opinions. Off the top of my head, I can think of unions, religion, and now this. When Roberts is outside the majority opinion now, Alito is the second most senior conservative Justice (you can remove conservative from that now that Breyer has retired). My main guess is that he really wanted this decision. He's been itching to get this for years. In the Freudian sense, I think he's the conservative id.

I'm not surprised that Thomas chose to assign it to someone other than himself. He wanted Bruen, which was argued weeks prior and which he got. I also agree that Gorsuch is too idiosyncratic to have gotten the majority opinion in this case.

I think you have to possibly look at the question the other way. Instead of asking how Alito got the majority assignment, it's worth considering how he was able to hold four other votes and deliver the hardline opinion as it was. It seems quite clear now that Barrett is more conservative than we thought at the start of this term, although still with three Justices to her right on most issues. It's striking that for all their agreements this term, Roberts clearly could not peel Kavanaugh away from the Alito opinion.

[Skill and Chance]

I have to admit I was absolutely not expecting Alito to have the Dobbs opinion. He does seem to get a disproportionate share of "stick it to the libs" opinions. Off the top of my head, I can think of unions, religion, and now this. When Roberts is outside the majority opinion now, Alito is the second most senior conservative Justice (you can remove conservative from that now that Breyer has retired). My main guess is that he really wanted this decision. He's been itching to get this for years. In the Freudian sense, I think he's the conservative id.

I'm not surprised that Thomas chose to assign it to someone other than himself. He wanted Bruen, which was argued weeks prior and which he got. I also agree that Gorsuch is too idiosyncratic to have gotten the majority opinion in this case.

I think you have to possibly look at the question the other way. Instead of asking how Alito got the majority assignment, it's worth considering how he was able to hold four other votes and deliver the hardline opinion as it was. It seems quite clear now that Barrett is more conservative than we thought at the start of this term, although still with three Justices to her right on most issues. It's striking that for all their agreements this term, Roberts clearly could not peel Kavanaugh away from the Alito opinion.

That would have been wild!  If you think Alito spent too much time on obscure/ancient stuff, just wait until Gorsuch cites to Emperor Valentinian's 374 AD edict outlawing infanticide throughout the Roman Empire.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

I agree with politicallefty. Optics may have been slightly better if Barrett wrote the opinion, but someone who was the most junior member of the court in the last term would never write opinions for major cases. (And Barrett, to my knowledge, hasn't written any of the opinions released thus far. I would ask one of the legal experts how long a new justice typically has to wait before being assigned an opinion when they're in the majority.)

But in a way we're overthinking this. Most Americans can't name every member of the Supreme Court. Whether it was Alito or Thomas or Gorsuch or Kavanaugh writing the opinion, the result would have been the same and the reaction would have been the same.

[Donerail]

Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was?

Because he's thought of by liberals and conservatives as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. He's put in the work, paid his dues, and finally gets to write his opinion. Same reason Thomas got Bruen.

(And Barrett, to my knowledge, hasn't written any of the opinions released thus far. I would ask one of the legal experts how long a new justice typically has to wait before being assigned an opinion when they're in the majority.)

Barrett has written several majority opinions in her time on the Court. New justices tend to write the same amount as old ones; anything else would put a probably unsustainable workload on the more senior justices. New justices are somewhat less likely to write the "big" cases, but, off the top of my head, Barrett has written for the majority in Patel v. Garland (limiting federal court review in immigration cases), Denezpi v. United States (tribal prosecutions don't count for double jeopardy), the unanimous water rights case Florida v. Georgia, and several others.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I agree with politicallefty. Optics may have been slightly better if Barrett wrote the opinion, but someone who was the most junior member of the court in the last term would never write opinions for major cases. (And Barrett, to my knowledge, hasn't written any of the opinions released thus far. I would ask one of the legal experts how long a new justice typically has to wait before being assigned an opinion when they're in the majority.)

The Supreme Court has a tradition that the newest justice always writes the decision of the first unanimous decision after they take office. Not sure what that was for her but she definitely did. And thus Ketanji Brown Jackson will probably have her first decision before the end of the year.

[Torie]

I don't agree with the premise of the OP. Alito probably got it as the senior justice to Thomas. The other 4 justices signed off on the opinion, and would have caused any offending language that they disliked to be removed. The decision was narrow in the sense that it was careful not to cast doubt on the other privacy/autonomy decisions.

What I wonder about is whether Roberts pushed hard on the idea that sure, if the decision just stuck down viability as where the line was drawn rather than get rid of the line entirely, sure, as per Alito's argument as to why the line needed to be erased now, further litigation would ensue as to where the line was to be drawn pre 15 weeks, if anywhere, but in the interim, Congress would have been put on notice that further and more severe and disruptive state balkanization was in the wings, with all the ensuing chaos, legal and otherwise, giving Congress time to pass a national law. [/i]  The think is, is limiting abortion on demand to the first 15 weeks is not very disruptive at all, at least in comparison to 0 weeks.

Give the public square adequate notice that a legal tsunami is coming down, so that it can take mitigatory action. The thing is, is that having abortion by right in the first trimester, and abortion thereafter only for medical necessity, is the most popular position of the voters, probably subscribed to by an absolute majority if the voters. Thus not giving Congress a chance to do that with prior notice, is simply a tragedy, and is going to cause great suffering to many that could have probably been avoided.

With a national law, not only would the negative consequences of Dobbs  have been greatly mitigated, but also the issue would have potentially had considerably more salience in the upcoming election, with bills probably voted on up or down in the interim. As it is, I don't think the issue will have that much salience, like it or not. That is what the polls show. So Alito's do it all now approach rather than a piecemeal approach with more litigation in that sense is both a prudential and a jurispudential fail. I wonder if Roberts made the argument with Kavanaugh at least. One wonders because Roberts did not make it in his concurrence. And that was a major omission on his part, and frankly surprising to me.

[brucejoel99]

The 3rd Circuit decision in Casey that O'Connor & Co. surprisingly overruled because it so insulted them was authored by none other than Circuit Judge Sam Alito, so I'm not sure how everybody ITT so far missed the blatantly obvious: payback he's been waiting 30 years for. Thomas obviously must've respected that desire enough to give him the assignment, & Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, & Barrett must've joined in that respect enough to be okay with said assignment.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My own thoughts:

1. The conservative majority thought of this as more of a political victory than an exercise of legal reasoning (even though as an exercise of legal reasoning it is, or easily could have been made, sounder than the Roe exercise originally was), and so they gave it to Alito as a "lib-owning" decision; they weren't concerned with gaining public acceptance for the ruling or with the ministerial task of rectifying a past instance of bad constitutional interpretation, they were concerned with spiking the ball for the conservative legal movement, which is also a political movement, and so went for the jugular.
2. Alito and/or his clerks had more time and energy for digging through nineteenth-century statutes and common law writings like those of Bracton, Coke, Hale, and Blackstone in order to construct the historiography that the Dobbs analysis relies on than did the other justices in the majority and/or their clerks.
3. Alito's never really gotten a makes-national-headlines-for-days-on-end barn-burner decision before and it was decided that he'd paid his dues.
4. Alito just has that Jersey-boy je ne sais quoi that the right flank of the Court has been jonesing for more of since Scalia shuffled off this mortal coil.

[If my soul was made of stone]

4. Alito just has that Jersey-boy je ne sais quoi that the right flank of the Court has been jonesing for more of since Scalia shuffled off this mortal coil.

i can be your angle (chris smith) or yuor devil (sam alito)

[David Hume]

Let's talk tea leaves here. It seems like literally any other justice in the Dobbs majority could have produced a controlling opinion that was at least a little better than what we ended up with, from one perspective or another. Thomas and Gorsuch would have produced bizarre, extreme opinions, but ones that would have "ripped the band-aid off" and leaned at least a little bit more towards legal and moral theory and less towards ideological diatribe than Alito's ultimately did. Barrett would have had the best optics. Kavanaugh's (disingenuously) conciliatory and apologetic writing style might have won the decision more public acceptance and/or a sixth vote from Roberts, who, as we all know, concurred in judgment anyway. And yet instead of assigning the majority opinion to any of these people, even himself, Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was? After a few people have posted, I'll share my own thoughts.

1, It is not clear was it Roberts or Thomas that assigned the opinion.

2, If it was assigned to Thomas, he would try to get rid of SDP in total, which could not get 5 votes. Kavanaugh may be the best one who can write a soft one that still does the job. Yet he would be too controversial due to his confirmation hearing, and too senior as well. Barrett is too senior, and might want to avoid being viewed as nominated just to overrule Roe for he religious belief. Alito is the pragmatic and no drama option.

[NewYorkExpress]

Let's talk tea leaves here. It seems like literally any other justice in the Dobbs majority could have produced a controlling opinion that was at least a little better than what we ended up with, from one perspective or another. Thomas and Gorsuch would have produced bizarre, extreme opinions, but ones that would have "ripped the band-aid off" and leaned at least a little bit more towards legal and moral theory and less towards ideological diatribe than Alito's ultimately did. Barrett would have had the best optics. Kavanaugh's (disingenuously) conciliatory and apologetic writing style might have won the decision more public acceptance and/or a sixth vote from Roberts, who, as we all know, concurred in judgment anyway. And yet instead of assigning the majority opinion to any of these people, even himself, Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was? After a few people have posted, I'll share my own thoughts.

1, It is not clear was it Roberts or Thomas that assigned the opinion.

2, If it was assigned to Thomas, he would try to get rid of SDP in total, which could not get 5 votes. Kavanaugh may be the best one who can write a soft one that still does the job. Yet he would be too controversial due to his confirmation hearing, and too senior as well. Barrett is too senior, and might want to avoid being viewed as nominated just to overrule Roe for he religious belief. Alito is the pragmatic and no drama option.

I'm inclined to believe that if Roberts was in the position to assign a majority opinion in Dobbs, he would have assigned it to himself, given the gravity and importance of the case.

[Donerail]

1. Roberts would not assign an opinion he himself would not join.
2. Thomas would not take it himself b/c he had Bruen.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Let's talk tea leaves here. It seems like literally any other justice in the Dobbs majority could have produced a controlling opinion that was at least a little better than what we ended up with, from one perspective or another. Thomas and Gorsuch would have produced bizarre, extreme opinions, but ones that would have "ripped the band-aid off" and leaned at least a little bit more towards legal and moral theory and less towards ideological diatribe than Alito's ultimately did. Barrett would have had the best optics. Kavanaugh's (disingenuously) conciliatory and apologetic writing style might have won the decision more public acceptance and/or a sixth vote from Roberts, who, as we all know, concurred in judgment anyway. And yet instead of assigning the majority opinion to any of these people, even himself, Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was? After a few people have posted, I'll share my own thoughts.

1, It is not clear was it Roberts or Thomas that assigned the opinion.

Roberts concurred in judgment only. It was almost certainly Thomas who assigned the opinion once it became clear there were five and only five votes for going "all the way".

[Skill and Chance]

Let's talk tea leaves here. It seems like literally any other justice in the Dobbs majority could have produced a controlling opinion that was at least a little better than what we ended up with, from one perspective or another. Thomas and Gorsuch would have produced bizarre, extreme opinions, but ones that would have "ripped the band-aid off" and leaned at least a little bit more towards legal and moral theory and less towards ideological diatribe than Alito's ultimately did. Barrett would have had the best optics. Kavanaugh's (disingenuously) conciliatory and apologetic writing style might have won the decision more public acceptance and/or a sixth vote from Roberts, who, as we all know, concurred in judgment anyway. And yet instead of assigning the majority opinion to any of these people, even himself, Thomas assigned it to Alito, whom practically nobody regards highly as a legal thinker and who's thought of by liberals and conservatives alike as one of the most party-political justices in the Supreme Court's modern history. Why do we think this was? After a few people have posted, I'll share my own thoughts.

1, It is not clear was it Roberts or Thomas that assigned the opinion.

Roberts concurred in judgment only. It was almost certainly Thomas who assigned the opinion once it became clear there were five and only five votes for going "all the way".

Roberts concurring in the judgement could matter significantly in the long run.  He has extremely strong respect for precedent and we know he didn't strongly disagree with it.  This means that one additional pro-choice justice would not sufficient to overrule it.