Supreme Court Abets Lawlessness in Texas

Jonathan Bernstein: “Those of us who believe that Roe v. Wade was correct when it gave women a constitutional right to abortion in 1973 are obviously unhappy with the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ decision to de facto overturn it — or, as Dahlia Lithwick put it in Slate Wednesday evening, Roe was ‘overruled this week, or nullified, or merely paused for a few million people.'”

“But well beyond that: Procedure matters, and the ad hoc, unjustified procedure in this case — procedure that produced a sharp and compelling dissent from Chief Justice John Roberts, who may eventually join a majority to destroy or overturn Roe — may have done as much to undermine the rule of law as anything we’ve seen in these last years of threats to constitutional government.”

“It simply can’t be the case that state governments can eliminate established constitutional rights by structuring laws so that they must go into effect, thus robbing people of those rights, without the courts having any option of stopping them. That’s what Texas and a handful of judges have done in this case, and it’s wrong and it’s lawless even if Roe was incorrectly decided.”