Arrogant Power in a Black Robe
Supreme Court Justice Alito says his plan to weaken women's rights is "benevolence to women".
In 2016 Presidential candidate Trump assured voters that his previous support for women’s abortion rights was history. Something had happened to make him change his mind.
I have become pro-life, [Trump said] … And the reason is, I have seen, in my case one specific situation, but numerous situations that have made me to go that way.
To make sure it sticks, he said, he would appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, “the biggest way you can protect it”. Of course, Trump won and we lost.
In 2005 President George W. Bush added Justice Samuel Alito to the Court. Then Trump added Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, and the conservative pack was solid. Long-time Justice Clarence Thomas would gladly go along.
Alito.
It’s hard to read all 98 pages of the Roe v. Wade opinion, dated February 10 and famously leaked on May 2, 2022. Scanning the printed text is like a nightmare where you’re taking an exam and don’t recognize what the question’s talking about. It’s also like being assigned to read Madame Bovary while already knowing the violent, sad ending.
So I was glad to find a short piece in the New York Review of Books this week, “Stealing the Crown Jewels”, where Sherrilyn Ifill spotlights one alarming paragraph of the leaked opinion.
“The crown jewels” in her title refers to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most powerful piece of President Johnson’s civil rights legislation. The Supreme Court killed the Act in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder by removing critical protections of its Section 4 and striking down the preclearance formula of Section 5.
In the article, Ifill points out how Alito’s leaked opinion weakening Roe v. Wade contains a shockingly disingenuous comment (it’s on page 61). Ifill says,
Justice Samuel Alito gives a cynically upbeat prediction about [the opinion’s] potential effects. Rather than forthrightly address the suffering the Court’s decision would cause, he casts it as a benevolent grant to women voters in individual states — one that would “return the issue of abortion to legislative bodies” and allow “women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process.” For emphasis, he reminds us that “women are not without electoral or political power.”
What a generous statement, Mr. Alito! You know very well that Shelby v. Holder took the life out of many black women’s right to vote.
And if you forget how Trump dealt the second punch, to the chance that these women’s votes will be counted, then Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett will happily fill you in.
On May 12 Justice Alito refused to comment on his leaked opinion. The Washington Post reported,
[Alito] was a little stumped by the final audience question from a crowd at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University: Are he and the other justices at a place where they could get a nice meal together?
“I think it would just be really helpful for all of us to hear, personally, are you all doing okay in these very challenging times?” the questioner asked.
“This is a subject I told myself I wasn’t going to talk about today regarding, you know — given all the circumstances,” Alito replied.
The irony was, the Post continues, Alito “was speaking via closed circuit from a room at the Supreme Court seven miles away, rather than in person, a sign these are not normal times.”