The Worst Justice In Modern Supreme Court History

 The following is part of a post by Robert Reich:

Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue. After reading his latest thoughts on America, I’ve concluded Thomas is even worse than Alito.

 

Last Wednesday, Thomas gave a rare public address at the University of Texas in Austin that began as a banal tribute to the Declaration of Independence before degenerating into a misleading screed against progressivism.

 

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream,” Thomas intoned. “The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.”

Thomas went on to blame progressives for the worst crimes of the 20^th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils. 

This is pure rubbish.

 

In reality, America’s Progressive era emerged at the start of the 20th century from the corruption and excesses of America’s first Gilded Age (we’re now in the second, if you hadn’t noticed) — its record inequalities of income and wealth, its “robber barons” who monopolized industries and handed out sacks of money to pliant legislators, it’s dangerous factories and unsafe working conditions, its violent attacks on workers who tried to form unions, its corporate control over all facets of government, its widespread poverty and disease, and its corrupt party machines. 

In many ways, the Progressive Era — whose most prominent leader was Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, not Woodrow Wilson, by the way — saved capitalism from its own excesses by instituting a progressive income tax, an estate tax, pure food and drug laws, and America’s first laws against corporate influence in politics.

Then, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin (Franklin D.), came Social Security, the 40-hour workweek (with time-and-a-half for overtime), the right to form unions, and laws and regulations that limited Wall Street’s ability to gamble with other people’s money.

 

Clarence Thomas got it exactly backwards. Had we not had the Progressive Era and its reforms extending through the 1930s, America might well have succumbed to fascism — as did Germany under Hitler, and Italy under Mussolini, or to communist fascism, as did Russia under Stalin. Progressive and New Deal reforms acted as bulwarks against the rise of fascism in America.

In fact, it’s been the demise of such reforms since Ronald Reagan that have opened the way to Trumpian neo-fascism. 

Over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized in the 1950s, giving them bargaining leverage to get higher wages and better working conditions. Now, fewer than 6 percent are unionized, which has contributed to the flattening of wages, a contracting middle class, inequalities of income and wealth rivaling the first Gilded Age, and an angry and suspicious working class that’s become easy prey for demagogues. 

Wall Street has been deregulated — allowing it to go on gambling sprees such as the one that produced the financial crisis of 2008, which claimed millions of working peoples’ homes, savings, and jobs. 

America’s social safety nets have become so frayed that almost a fifth of the nation’s children are now in poverty. Yet Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have slashed taxes on the rich and on big corporations and have allowed giant corporations to merge into giant monopolies rivaling the trusts of the first Gilded Age. And Trump has ushered in an era of corruption the likes of which America hasn’t seen since that earlier disgraceful era. 

Thomas claims that “The century of progressivism did not go well.” Baloney. It helped America create the largest middle class the world had ever seen, while also extending prosperity to millions of Black and brown people. 

The tragedy is that America turned its back on progressivism and on social progress, in part because of the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas.

A federal law — 28 U.S. Code § 455 — requires that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Thomas’s wife, Ginni, actively strategized with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on overturning the election results. Between Election Day 2020 and the days following the January 6th attack on the Capitol, she exchanged 29 text messages with Meadows, in which she spread false theories about the election, urged Meadows to overturn the election results, and called for specific actions from the White House to help overturn the election. She also served as one of nine board members of a group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement and called for the punishment of House Republicans who participated in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack. 

Yet Clarence Thomas has repeatedly participated in cases that have come to the high court directly or indirectly involving the 2020 election results, refusing to disqualify himself. 

In addition, he failed to disclose his wife’s income from her work at the Heritage Foundation, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act. 

Finally, there’s his speech last week in Austin. How can Americans be expected to believe in the impartiality of the Supreme Court in general and Clarence Thomas in particular when he condemns an entire philosophy of government — progressivism — and all the people who continue to call themselves progressives, in effect labeling them neo-fascists?

 

At the start of his speech last week in Austin, Clarence Thomas noted that “My wife Virginia and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here, and it is so special to have our dear friends Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today.”

He was, of course, referring to the Republican mega-donor who has spent the last twenty years lavishing Thomas with personal gifts, luxury yacht trips, fancy vacations, and funding for Ginni Thomas’s political organization. 

Small wonder that Clarence Thomas prefers the Gilded Age over the Progressive Era. He’s the living embodiment of The Gilded Age’s public-be-damned excesses.

 

Hence, he’s my nominee for the worst justice in modern Supreme Court history.

If He's Broken The Law, Trump Must Be Indicted And Tried

Donald Trump is being investigated by several entities for possible breaking the law -- the city of New York, the state of New York, the state of Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Justice. And it looks like one of those entities is close to issuing an indictment -- the city of New York.

This has the talking heads on cable news going crazy. They're saying that an indictment would anger Trump's followers, and possibly result in violence (similar to the January 6th riot). They're saying it would represent a low point in American history having a former president put on trial. And they're saying it might make Trump more popular (helping him to again be nominated by the Republicans).

They may be right about all of that. But that is NOT a good excuse to not indict and try Trump for breaking the law. If he has broken the law (and I believe he has), then he must be indicted and tried.

It must happen to uphold the rule of law, and once again establish equality under the law for all citizens. A failure to do so would mean that we have a two-tiered justice system -- one for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of America. 

While it is true that the rich have an easier time in our courts than the poor, that is something that we have fought against as a country. Refusing to indict and try Trump would make a mockery of that battle for equal justice.

We cannot allow the wealth or popularity of any individual to determine how they will be treated under the law. And we cannot allow threats to determine whether a lawbreaker will be punished or not. 

We are at a national cross road. Do we believe in the rule of law or not? Do we believe all men/women should be treated equally under the law or not? If we choose the latter in either case, we will do serious damage to our democracy.

Trump Must Be Prosecuted To Save The "Rule Of Law"

 

The following op-ed is by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times:

Donald Trump may finally be indicted. Finally!

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has signaled that charges, related to Trump’s reported hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, are likely.

But there’s also hand-wringing: about whether this is the best case to be the first among those in which Trump is likely to be criminally charged, the strength of this case compared to others and the historic implications of indicting a former president for anything.

And with regard to those implications, the central considerations always seem to be the importance of any precedent set by prosecuting a former president and the broader political significance — what damage it might do to the country. Often left out of that calculus, it seems to me, is the damage Trump has already done and is poised to continue to do.

Prosecution is not the problem; Trump himself is. And any pretense that the allegations of his marauding criminality are a sideshow to the political stakes and were, therefore, remedied in 2020 at the ballot box rather than in a jury box, is itself a miscarriage of justice and does incalculable damage.

Last year, around the time the House Jan. 6 committee was holding hearings, Elaine Kamarck, the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, wrote: “Prosecuting Trump is not a simple matter of determining whether the evidence is there. It is a question embedded in the larger issue of how to restore and defend American democracy.”

I don’t see it that way. Any case against Trump must hang on the evidence and the principle that justice is blind. The political considerations, including gaming out what might be the ideal sequence of cases, across jurisdictions and by their gravity, only serve to distort the judicial process.

The justice system must be untethered from political implications and consequences, even the possibility of disruptive consequences.

For instance, could an indictment and prosecution of Trump cause consternation and possibly even unrest? Absolutely. Trump has been preparing his followers for his martyrdom for years and evangelizing to them the idea that any sanctioning of him is an attack on them. This transference of feelings of persecution and pain from manufactured victimhood is a classic psychological device of a cult leader.

Trump uses the passions he has inflamed as a political threat against those pursuing him: In 2019, when he was facing impeachment, he took to Twitter, citing a quote from Pastor Robert Jeffress, who’d appeared on Fox News and recklessly posited that if Trump were removed from office “it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”

Last year, on a conservative talk radio show, Trump said that if he were indicted in connection with his alleged mishandling of classified documents, “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”

Over and over, Trump has goaded his supporters in this direction: whether during the 2016 presidential race, urging rallygoers to “knock the crap out of” people who might disrupt the proceedings, or telling the Proud Boys, during a 2020 debate, to “stand back and stand by.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, he waited and watched the attack on the Capitol for hours, resisting pleas from his own advisers to try to stop it. When Trump finally made a statement, he downplayed the insurrection and reluctantly told the rioters to go home, but not without adding: “We love you. You’re very special.”

Trump is the impresario of incitement. He’ll use any attempt to hold him accountable to agitate and activate his loyalists.

That’s not a reason to avoid vigorously and swiftly pursuing him legally, but rather a reason to do it. If we establish a precedent that amassing a significant threat to society is a ward against enforcement of the law, it makes a mockery of the law.

It would reinforce what was already a persistent problem in the criminal justice system: unequal treatment of the rich and powerful, compared to that of the poor and powerless.

A series of studies from more than a decade ago in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that upper-income people were more likely to lie, cheat and literally take candy meant to be given to children. The researchers postulated that several factors could have contributed to this, including a lowered perception of risk, plenty of money to deal with the “downstream costs” of their behavior, feelings of entitlement, less concern about what other people think and a general sense that greed is good.

At the same time, as Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton write in their book, “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison,” “The criminal justice system is biased from start to finish in a way that guarantees that, for the same crimes, members of the lower classes are much more likely than members of the middle and upper classes to be arrested, convicted and imprisoned.”

The authors go further, theorizing that the goal of the criminal justice system isn’t even to prevent crime or provide justice, but rather to “project to the American public a credible image of the threat of crime as a threat from the poor.” When you think of it that way, it’s not hard to see how Trump and many of his admirers choose to see him as above the law. Indeed, if he weren’t rich and powerful, charges would almost surely have been filed long ago.

Prosecuting Trump wouldn’t break the country. On the contrary, it would be a step toward mending it, a step toward undergirding the flimsy promise of “equal justice under law.”

The eyes of the country are on these cases — the eyes of all those who’ve been badgered for minor violations, who’ve had the book thrown at them for crimes that others either got away with or served no time for. Not only are they watching, but so are their loved ones and their communities.

They, too, are America, and further damaging their faith in the country should matter as much as damaging the faith of any other part of our body politic.

To rehabilitate American justice, Trump must be prosecuted.

Most Say SC Justices Vote Their Own Political Views

 This chart is from an Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between February 25th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Support Women In Their March To Freedom/Justice/Equality

The following excellent op-ed is by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner:

The news emerging from Iran describes a courageous fight for freedom.

When it comes to repression, the Iranian government is among the most brutal in the world. Now protests are sweeping the country after its notorious "morality police" killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly not wearing her hijab appropriately. The widespread response has united people of different ages, economic classes, ethnicities, and even religiousness. 

The Iranian people have protested before in the wake of other outrages. And, once again, a brutal and bloody crackdown is underway. If the past is prologue, hundreds will die. But reports from the country suggest that the embers of disgust at the regime will not be easily extinguished — no matter the arrests, tear gas, or bullets. Many Iranians are saying some version of, “We have nothing to lose.” And it is difficult to permanently subdue a population that feels that way. 

Another hallmark of these protests has echoes in other movements active around the world, including in the United States. And it is one that should have Iranian authorities rethinking their assumptions. At the frontlines of these protests are women. They are burning their headscarves, dancing in the streets, and chanting their truths. 

It is impossible to overstate the courage of these actions. They represent a direct repudiation of a system that oppresses women at all stages of life. Iranian women are fighting for the most basic of human rights: the right to be themselves. In this fight, they are of course not alone. Around the globe, societies that differ in such matters as religion, race, ethnicity, or even form of government often have one thing in common — women have fewer rights than their male counterparts. Their work is less valued, their autonomy questioned, their voices silenced. 

Most if not all present-day societies have been constructed by men to further domination by men. This dynamic is fundamentally incompatible with a truly just and equitable society, no matter how soaring the rhetoric of one’s constitution. 

And that is the case in our beloved United States. You aren’t truly a representative democracy if women are not equal citizens, both in practice as well as in law. Our country and others have achieved progress toward this goal, but much remains to be done. And while male allies have aided the cause in America, women have inevitably been compelled to rely on their courage, determination, ingenuity, intelligence (and any other positive adjective you wish to offer), to secure more of an equal footing in their own country.

Now, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, what had seemed to many a consistent march of progress has been thrown backward. Roe's reversal signified the culmination of a trend years in the making. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump and all he stood for was not only a rebuke of women’s progress but a threat to women’s rights. Hillary Clinton, who would have been the country's first woman president, warned the nation during the 2016 campaign. Like those of countless women before her, her concerns were too readily dismissed. 

During the Trump presidency, many of those who stood up to defend American democracy most forcefully and effectively were women. There was the Women’s March in the immediate wake of the inauguration, to let the world know there would be a vocal and passionate opposition. Women ran for and won elected office in 2018 and 2020 by campaigning as bulwarks against Trump and Trumpism. And women lawyers took action in a variety of forums to protect America’s rights and ideals against the Trump assault. My friend Dahlia Lithwick profiles many examples of this mobilization in her wonderful new book Lady Justice. 

To be sure, women are not monolithic in their politics. There are millions who support Trump, and it was the addition of a woman to the Supreme Court — Amy Coney Barrett — that helped cement the end of Roe. But one need only look at the gender gap for voters in this country to recognize that if women were still barred from exercising this basic right (as they were for the majority of this nation’s history), we would be a very different country. And that’s putting it mildly. It’s chilling to contemplate where we would be. 

Is it a coincidence that of all the Republicans who could have spoken out against the outrages of Trump, it is a woman, Liz Cheney, who has done so most forcibly and has faced the biggest backlash?

Is it surprising that the most direct efforts to hold Trump legally accountable to date have come from women, and Black women at that — New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fani T. Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia?

Is it shocking that in the wake of Dobbs and other outrages, women would once again rally in defense of a vision for America that is inclusive and empathetic?  

This nation, and our larger world, are greatly improved by women’s activism and political involvement. That is a statement of fact. The evidence is overwhelming. In the United States, it is striking that women, who have felt the inequality of American democracy from its inception, should be among its fiercest protectors and improvers. This is something women share with Black America and a reason why women of color in particular have played such a vital role in making our country better against long odds. 

We are headed into an election where the forces summoned by Trump still threaten the future of American democracy. If they are defeated, it is likely to be because once again women stepped in to save the country from itself. 

In the long run, from the streets of Iran to the ballot boxes of America, from political movements around the world to the dreams of young girls who know they are just as capable as their male counterparts, we can find a real and persistent hope that women will also help save the world from itself. 

Let us hope that, regardless of gender, nationality, race, religion, or other distinction, there will be widespread support for women in this march toward the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality. 

The Public's View Of The Supreme Court Justices

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 9th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults, with a 2.9 point margin of error.

The most popular justice currently is Ketanji Brown Jackson at 41% favorability. The next most popular are Clarence Thomas at 38% and Sonia Sotomayor at 37%.

Plurality Supports Confirmation Of Ketanji Brown Jackson

The chart above reflects the results of the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 26th and 29th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,313 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.9 points, and for registered voters is 3.0 points.

President Biden's Supreme Court Nominee

President Joe Biden announced Friday that he will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.

Statement From Anthony Huber's Family

How Each Justice Feels About Roe Vs. Wade

The Supreme Court is considering in this term a Mississippi law that virtually outlaws abortion in the state. Many think they could use this law to overturn the decision that made abortion legal -- Roe vs. Wade.

Will the court overturn the decision and let each state decide if it wants to outlaw abortion. That kind of decision would insure that women do NOT have equal rights in this country, because women would no longer have the right to control their own bodies.

It does not look good right now, but the court has surprised us in the past.

The following, from Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko at APNews.com, shows us how each justice could vote -- using their own words and past actions.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS

Roberts voted to uphold restrictions in two major abortion cases, in the majority in 2007 to uphold a ban on a method of abortion opponents call “partial-birth abortion” and in dissent in 2016 when the court struck down Texas restrictions on abortion clinics in a case called Whole Woman’s Health. But when a virtually identical law from Louisiana came before the court in 2020, Roberts voted against it and wrote the opinion controlling the outcome of the case and striking down the Louisiana law. The chief justice said he continues to believe that the 2016 case “was wrongly decided” but that the question was “whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.”

Roberts’ views on when to break with court precedent could determine how far he is willing to go in the Mississippi case. At his 2005 confirmation hearing, he said overturning precedent “is a jolt to the legal system,” which depends in part on stability and evenhandedness. Thinking that an earlier case was wrongly decided is not enough, he said. Overturning a case requires looking “at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the Court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments,” Roberts said then. 

In the same hearing, Roberts was asked to explain his presence on a legal brief filed by the George H.W. Bush administration that said Roe’s conclusion that there is a right to abortion has “no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.” Roberts responded that the brief reflected the administration’s views.

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS

Thomas voted to overturn Roe in 1992, in his first term on the court, when he was a dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He has repeatedly called for Roe and Casey to be overturned since.

In 2000, he wrote in dissent when the court struck down Nebraska’s ban on “partial-birth abortion.” Recounting the court’s decision in Roe, he wrote, “In 1973, this Court struck down an Act of the Texas Legislature that had been in effect since 1857, thereby rendering unconstitutional abortion statutes in dozens of States. As some of my colleagues on the Court, past and present, ably demonstrated, that decision was grievously wrong. Abortion is a unique act, in which a woman’s exercise of control over her own body ends, depending on one’s view, human life or potential human life. Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother. Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so.”

JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER

Breyer has been the lead author of two court majorities in defense of abortion rights, in 2000 and 2016. He has never voted to sustain an abortion restriction, but he has acknowledged the controversy over abortion.

Millions of Americans believe “that an abortion is akin to causing the death of an innocent child,” while millions of others “fear that a law that forbids abortion would condemn many American women to lives that lack dignity,” he wrote in the Nebraska case 21 years ago, calling those views “virtually irreconcilable.” Still, Breyer wrote, because the Constitution guarantees “fundamental individual liberty” and has to govern even when there are strong divisions in the country, “this Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman’s right to choose.”

JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO

Alito has a long track record of votes and writings opposing abortion rights, as a jurist and, earlier, a government lawyer.

Alito has voted to uphold every abortion law the court has considered since his 2006 confirmation, joining a majority to uphold the federal “partial-birth” abortion law and dissenting in the 2016 and 2020 cases.

As a federal appeals court judge, he voted to uphold a series of Pennsylvania abortion restrictions, including requiring a woman to notify her spouse before obtaining an abortion. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down the notification rule in Casey and reaffirmed the abortion right in 1992 by a 5-4 vote.

Working for the Reagan administration in 1985, Alito wrote in a memo that the government should say publicly in a pending abortion case “that we disagree with Roe v. Wade.” Around the same time, applying for a promotion, Alito noted he was “particularly proud” of his work arguing “that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Sotomayor joined the court in 2009 with virtually no record on abortion issues, but has voted repeatedly in favor of abortion rights since then. Recently, when the court allowed Texas’ restrictive abortion law to take effect, Sotomayor accused her colleagues of burying “their heads in the sand.” She was in the majority in the Texas and Louisiana abortion clinic cases. 

Sotomayor’s displeasure with the court’s recent Texas ruling was evident at a recent virtual appearance she made. “I can’t change Texas’ law, but you can,” she said.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN

Kagan also has repeatedly voted in favor of abortion rights in more than 11 years as a justice. She is also arguably the most consistent voice on the court arguing for the importance of adhering to precedents and can be expected to try to persuade her colleagues not to jettison constitutional protections for abortion.

Kagan was in the majority when the court struck down the Texas and Louisiana restrictions on abortion clinics. More recently, Kagan called Texas’ new abortion law “patently unconstitutional” and a “clear, and indeed undisputed, conflict with Roe and Casey.”

Kagan had already grappled with the issue of abortion before becoming a justice. While working in the Clinton White House she was the co-author of a memo that urged the president for political reasons to support a late-term abortion ban proposed by Republicans in Congress, so long as it contained an exception for the health of the woman. Ultimately, President George W. Bush signed a similar late-term abortion ban without a health exception. The Supreme Court upheld it.

JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH

Gorsuch has perhaps the shortest record on abortion among the nine justices. He was in the majority allowing Texas’ restrictive abortion law to take effect. In dissent in 2020, he would have upheld Louisiana’s abortion clinic restrictions. As an appeals court judge before joining the Supreme Court in 2017, Gorsuch dissented when his colleagues declined to reconsider a ruling that blocked then-Utah Gov. Gary Herbert from cutting off funding for the state branch of Planned Parenthood. But Gorsuch insisted at his Senate confirmation hearing that he was concerned about procedural issues, not the subject matter. “I do not care if the case is about abortion or widgets or anything else,” he said.

JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH

Kavanaugh’s name was added to former President Donald Trump’s shortlist of Supreme Court candidates shortly after he sided with the administration in a 2017 case involving abortion. Trump chose him for the court the following year. As a justice, Kavanaugh dissented from the Louisiana decision and voted to allow the new Texas law to take effect, though he has taken a less absolutist stance than some of his conservative colleagues. In the Louisiana case, for example, Kavanaugh wrote that more information was needed about how the state’s restrictions on clinics would affect doctors who provide abortions and seemed to suggest his vote could change knowing that information.

Kavanaugh’s most extensive writing on abortion came while he was a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington. The Trump administration had appealed a lower court ruling ordering it to allow a pregnant 17-year-old immigrant in its custody to get an abortion. The administration’s policy was to decline to help those minors get abortions while in custody.

Kavanaugh was on a three-judge panel that postponed the abortion, arguing that officials should be given a limited window to transfer the minor out of government custody to the care of a sponsor. She could then obtain an abortion without the government’s assistance. The full appeals court later reversed the decision and the teenager obtained an abortion. Kavanaugh called that decision out-of-step with the “many majority opinions of the Supreme Court that have repeatedly upheld reasonable regulations that do not impose an undue burden on the abortion right recognized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.”

Kavanaugh was criticized by some conservatives for not going as far as a colleague, Judge Karen Henderson, who stated unambiguously that an immigrant in the U.S. illegally has no right to an abortion. At his appeals court confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh dodged questions on his own personal beliefs on Roe v. Wade.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT

Barrett’s one public vote on the Supreme Court concerning abortion was to allow the Texas “fetal heartbeat” law to take effect. She also cast two votes as an appeals court judge to reconsider rulings that blocked Indiana abortion restrictions.

In 2016, shortly before the election that would put Trump in office, she commented about how she thought abortion law might change if Trump had the chance to appoint justices. “I ... don’t think the core case — Roe’s core holding that, you know, women have a right to an abortion — I don’t think that would change,” said Barrett, then a Notre Dame law professor. She said limits on what she called “very late-term abortions” and restrictions on abortion clinics would be more likely to be upheld. 

Barrett also has a long record of personal opposition to abortion rights, co-authoring a 1998 law review article that said abortion is “always immoral.” At her 2017 hearing to be an appeals court judge, Barrett said in written testimony, “If I am confirmed, my views on this or any other question will have no bearing on the discharge of my duties as a judge.”