Will Roe v. Wade by overturned?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You have a precedent from the 1970s that should NEVER be overturned.

Why?

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Why?

I guess you could also try "leave it up to Congress"

[The Duke]

I think the 2008 election will determine whether Roe is overturned.  I don't think anyone thinks Stevens will make it passed the year 2012.  I think he is most likely to be replaced by whoever wins in 2008.

In 2012, Ginsberg will be 79, Scalia will be 76, Kennedy will be 76, Breyer will be 74, Souter will be 73.  I think they're all most likely to be replaced by whoever ins in 2008.

O'Connor's replacement, and Rehnquist's replacement presumably, will be on the Court for many years let's assume.

Only Thomas will still be on the Court after 2012 of all the current Judges for sure.

This means that whoever wins in 2008 will replace the liberal Ginsberg, Breyer, Stephens, and Souter, the moderate Kennedy, and the conservative Scalia.  Either Hillary Clinton gets to secure another generation of liberal Supreme Court decisions or George Allen gets to return the Constiution to the pre-Griswold v Connecticut form.  High stakes boys and girls.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I think the 2008 election will determine whether Roe is overturned.  I don't think anyone thinks Stevens will make it passed the year 2012.  I think he is most likely to be replaced by whoever wins in 2008.

In 2012, Ginsberg will be 79, Scalia will be 76, Kennedy will be 76, Breyer will be 74, Souter will be 73.  I think they're all most likely to be replaced by whoever ins in 2008.

O'Connor's replacement, and Rehnquist's replacement presumably, will be on the Court for many years let's assume.

Only Thomas will still be on the Court after 2012 of all the current Judges for sure.

This means that whoever wins in 2008 will replace the liberal Ginsberg, Breyer, Stephens, and Souter, the moderate Kennedy, and the conservative Scalia.  Either Hillary Clinton gets to secure another generation of liberal Supreme Court decisions or George Allen gets to return the Constiution to the pre-Griswold v Connecticut form.  High stakes boys and girls.

If Bush "I'm uniter, not a divider" hadn't become President, we wouldn't have these levels of political polarization.

[Peter]

This means that whoever wins in 2008 will replace the liberal Ginsberg, Breyer, Stephens, and Souter, the moderate Kennedy, and the conservative Scalia.  Either Hillary Clinton gets to secure another generation of liberal Supreme Court decisions or George Allen gets to return the Constiution to the pre-Griswold v Connecticut form.  High stakes boys and girls.

I think thats a slight over-hyping of the situation.

A lot of the fundamental rulings will remain in place simply because they go unchallenged in the Courts. For the Court to have to rule on something like Griswold, a State legislature is actually going to have to try to restrict access to contraception, and this is not likely to happen in this day and age.

The Court will have the opportunity to overturn the more controversial rulings of recent times such as Roper and the other death penalty rulings. It will also have a shot at Roe et al. without doubt.

You won't see challenges to things like Brown v. Board or Loving v. VA because quite simply no State in its right mind will attempt to pass Laws in contravention of those rulings in today's world, and even if they did, I think the most conservative court that I concoct would still uphold the precedents.

Griswold and Eisenstadt will be relatively protected by the lack of viable cases on the issue, though there will be some general ebbing away at the edges on the issue of privacy. Lawrence v. TX will have a similar lack of cases (it took 17 years for the Court to get another case on the matter after Bowers).

The biggest danger for liberals is the impact on State and Church, with most likely a strong reversal on what is very much a hot topic. Miranda v. AZ could come under threat, but even Rehnquist upheld that in Dickerson, so I tend to doubt it.

Even if some of these things are overturned, it still ultimately just returns things to State legislatures, and a lot has changed since the 60s and 70s. Even with the loss of Roe and Casey, abortion is not going to be outlawed overnight across the US; Even with the loss of Roper, many fewer States will re-implement executions of juvenile criminals than had it before the ruling.

Whilst I feel that continuing conservative Presidencies will remove the judicial option that liberals have perhaps become too fond of, they will still be able to fight their fight in the State legislatures, and you've got to remember that in the years before Roe there was a great liberalisation of the abortion laws by the legislatures acting on their own.

[minionofmidas]

Roe is based on the same legal logic as Dred Scott: substantive due process (i.e. whatever I feel should be unconstitutional, is unconstitutional).

Which Dred Scott?

The majority opinion which held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, or the original majority opitnion which held that Dred Scott was a slave because the MO Supreme Court said he was a slave or the MO Supreme Court decision that overturned earlier MO precedent because of political expediency (and freely admitted the fact) or the minority opinion that went just short of declaring slavery unconstitutional?
All the decisions involved were pretty bad...

[AuH2O]

These predictions of retirement were made before the 2000 election as well. Certainly the 2008 winner appears likely to nominate at least one justice, but unless they win reelection they probably won't shape the court.

[The Vorlon]

Roe V Wade - best thing to ever happen to the GOP

[Sam Spade]

Roe V Wade - best thing to ever happen to the GOP

Quite correct.

The best thing that can happen to the Democrats over the long run is that these types of issues go back to the state legislatures.

[Bono]

This means that whoever wins in 2008 will replace the liberal Ginsberg, Breyer, Stephens, and Souter, the moderate Kennedy, and the conservative Scalia.  Either Hillary Clinton gets to secure another generation of liberal Supreme Court decisions or George Allen gets to return the Constiution to the pre-Griswold v Connecticut form.  High stakes boys and girls.

I think thats a slight over-hyping of the situation.

A lot of the fundamental rulings will remain in place simply because they go unchallenged in the Courts. For the Court to have to rule on something like Griswold, a State legislature is actually going to have to try to restrict access to contraception, and this is not likely to happen in this day and age.

The Court will have the opportunity to overturn the more controversial rulings of recent times such as Roper and the other death penalty rulings. It will also have a shot at Roe et al. without doubt.

You won't see challenges to things like Brown v. Board or Loving v. VA because quite simply no State in its right mind will attempt to pass Laws in contravention of those rulings in today's world, and even if they did, I think the most conservative court that I concoct would still uphold the precedents.

Griswold and Eisenstadt will be relatively protected by the lack of viable cases on the issue, though there will be some general ebbing away at the edges on the issue of privacy. Lawrence v. TX will have a similar lack of cases (it took 17 years for the Court to get another case on the matter after Bowers).

The biggest danger for liberals is the impact on State and Church, with most likely a strong reversal on what is very much a hot topic. Miranda v. AZ could come under threat, but even Rehnquist upheld that in Dickerson, so I tend to doubt it.

Even if some of these things are overturned, it still ultimately just returns things to State legislatures, and a lot has changed since the 60s and 70s. Even with the loss of Roe and Casey, abortion is not going to be outlawed overnight across the US; Even with the loss of Roper, many fewer States will re-implement executions of juvenile criminals than had it before the ruling.

Whilst I feel that continuing conservative Presidencies will remove the judicial option that liberals have perhaps become too fond of, they will still be able to fight their fight in the State legislatures, and you've got to remember that in the years before Roe there was a great liberalisation of the abortion laws by the legislatures acting on their own.

I think striking down Wickard v. Filburn and Reynolds v. Sims is much more important than all that stuff.

[The Duke]

Peter,

What I mean is not that specific cases will be specifically over ruled, what I mean is that is Republicans get to replace Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsberg, and Souter then the way the Constitution is viewed will change, and will more closely resemble the attitudes of the Court before Griswold.  I only named Griswold specifically because I consider it the major turning point of the Court in the 20th Century.

[A18]

After O'Connor
President Bush owes his supporters a nominee in the Scalia-Thomas mold.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006917

When President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor for the Supreme Court in 1981, former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, a Democrat, declared, "I don't know the lady, but if she's a good lawyer and believes in the Constitution, she'll be all right."

And so Justice O'Connor was confirmed unanimously as the 102nd Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the first woman to sit on the highest court in the land. Twenty-four years later, her retirement has set the judicial-appointment process in motion again for the first time in 11 years. On Friday President Bush called for a "dignified" confirmation process, meaning no repeat of the attempts to annihilate Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. By way of contrast, Barbara Jordan's comment seems like a relic of a more gracious past.

Hours after Justice O'Connor's announcement, MoveOn.org was predicting a nominee who is "an extremist who will undermine the rights of individuals and families." Ted Kennedy was already ratcheting up his end-of-days rhetoric. Mr. Bush shouldn't let these threats deter him from choosing someone who will move the Court in the direction that voters have endorsed in two Presidential elections in a row.

Justice O'Connor is being hailed as the Court's "swing" Justice, but her legacy is more complicated. She has been a conservative on property rights and federalism, most recently in her Kelo dissent, where she took vigorous issue with the Court's extension of government's eminent domain power to include the taking of private property for private economic development. Replacing her with a "moderate" could actually mean a more liberal court on those issues.

Where she drifted left over the years--and where her written opinions often sowed confusion--was on social issues, notably church-state and racial matters. She focused more on the facts of a particular case than on determining bright-line rules that citizens could understand and legislatures could follow in the future. Before the Ten Commandments decision came down last month, Beltway wags joked that Justice O'Connor would find five of the 10 unconstitutional.

Her muddled 2003 rulings on racial preferences at the University of Michigan is a case in point. On one hand, she found a "compelling governmental interest" in ensuring diversity, but she also expressed the hope that 25 years hence it would no longer be needed. Even here, however, she opposed the most blatant race-based schemes, which would put her to the right of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, judging from what we know about his role in influencing the government brief in the Michigan cases.

She also moved left on abortion over the years, but her departure does not put Roe v. Wade in jeopardy, notwithstanding claims on the left. Justice O'Connor provided the fifth vote in Casey, reaffirming Roe and a woman's right to abortion, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg has since joined the Court as the sixth vote in favor of Roe. On the other hand, the Carhart partial-birth abortion case--a 5-4 decision overturning Nebraska's ban--could well be overturned. But then two-thirds of Americans support laws banning that procedure, and it is the Court's extremism that has blocked just about any regulation of abortion even up to the time of birth.

Mr. Bush has had five years to evaluate possible nominees to the Supreme Court and there are many highly qualified candidates--male and female, on the appeals courts and elsewhere. Liberals who are demanding that he replace Justice O'Connor with a non-conservative are ignoring the recent history of Supreme Court nominations. When President Clinton named liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg to replace Byron White, who had voted against Roe, Republicans didn't object even though that clearly moved the Court to the left on abortion and most other issues.

Mr. Bush has often said he'd like to appoint a Hispanic to the Court, and there are several fine candidates, including Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was filibustered during Mr. Bush's first Administration. As a war President, Mr. Bush will also want someone who has a healthy respect for executive power in fighting terrorism--such as the Fourth Circuit's J. Harvie Wilkinson. This argues against Mr. Gonzales who, as former White House counsel and now head of the Justice Department, would have to recuse himself from most if not all of the war-on-terror cases. A series of 4-4 rulings would be bad for the country on what promises to be a fundamental legal debate in the coming years and could be a matter of national survival.

Any nominee will provide a test of the recent Senate deal barring a filibuster except in "extraordinary circumstances." If words mean anything, they ought to allow a filibuster only in the case of something truly unusual, such as an ethical scandal. They shouldn't include judicial philosophy, although the left is already trying to re-define them that way. The only time the filibuster has been used against a Supreme Court nominee was LBJ's choice of Abe Fortas, who faced corruption charges, and even then it was used mainly to gauge Senate support.

Justice O'Connor served 24 terms, and the average tenure for recent Justices is 19.5 years, or five Presidential terms, so the stakes are enormous. For liberals, the courts have become the preferred way to win policy victories now that Americans are consistently rejecting their agenda at the ballot box. Unlike Barbara Jordan and her colleagues 25 years ago, modern liberals are unlikely to be satisfied with a nominee who is a "good lawyer and believes in the Constitution."

But the only way to stop "borking" as a political strategy is to defy and defeat it. Mr. Bush told voters in 2000 and 2004 that he would nominate Justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. He owes it to the country, and his most loyal supporters, to keep that promise.

[Brandon H]

I don't see it happending.  However, I have no problem with leaving this issue up to the states.

Thankfully you live in Maryland.  Talk to someone in Pennsylvania!

Why you think that we'd outlaw it completely? I'd say that a motion to ban completely or restrict abortion heavily would be swiftly vetoed by Rendell and the legislature wouldn't override.

You have a precedent from the 1970s that should NEVER be overturned.  This "leave it up to the states" is total bullcrap. 

So should the precedent from the 1800s that said Dred Scot could not sue for his freedom never be overturned (which obviously already has)?

If the Supreme Court said today unborn children had rights, you would be jumping all over "leave it up to the states".