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.
