High Court’s loyalty to Constitution, not Roe

Despite what you might have learned in high school civics, the Supreme Court only has one role in our system of government — to uphold Roe v. Wade.

That’s the sentiment behind the furor over the leak of a Supreme Court opinion drafted =by Justice Samuel Alito overturning the abortion decision.

Left-wing commentators have hailed the shocking leak and said the Court deserves to be burned down and even ended altogether for the offense of finding no constitutional warrant for one of the court’s most controversial decisions of the last half-century.

The leak was confirmed as authentic by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Assuming it came from someone on the left of the court, it is a brazen breach of the Court’s rules in an attempt to sabotage its deliberations.

The Court has been one of the few institutions that has managed to maintain a measure of self-respect and integrity. Its oral arguments aren’t televised, which tempts people to play to the cameras. The arguments are invariably civil, even if intense — in contrast to what is heard on cable news, social media or the floor of Congress. The Court has honored confidentiality as it considers a case and justices write and share their opinions.

The leaker, whether a justice, a clerk or a staffer, clearly intended to engender a reaction to intimidate one of the majority into changing his or her mind.

This is how hardball politics works in Congress or in the executive branch, where leaks are the norm and often no one trusts nobody. It’s inimical to the spirit of the Supreme Court, which is supposed to decide cases free of political influence.

Tellingly, almost no one on the left criticized the leak. Instead, many praised it as an act of brave defiance that reflects the gravity of the moment.

The is yet another sign of the hypocrisy of all the Trump-era lectures from progressives about the importance of norms and neutral rules. As soon as a Supreme Court decision might go against them, they abandon all pretense of believing any of that and attempt to bludgeon the Court into submission.

The leak, in its own way, brings home how one of the key assumptions in the Court’s abortion jurisprudence has been wrong all along. It imagined itself settling once and for all a highly contested issue. In reality, by attempting to take the issue out of politics, it made the fight over abortion more divisive, while making itself a political football. Now, the issue it sought to settle has blown back on the Court, perhaps changing how it operates forever.

The leak speaks of the desperation of pro-abortion forces to preserve Roe, and its guarantee of a radically pro-abortion regime everywhere in the United States. It doesn’t matter if it requires a breach of trust at the Supreme Court — indeed, for many of them, the Court as we know isn’t worth having if it doesn’t uphold Roe.

Never mind if, as Alito’s draft opinion devastatingly demonstrates, there’s no constitutional basis for Roe.

The Supreme Court’s loyalty isn’t to Roe, but to the Constitution, and it can show it by issuing the Alito opinion its critics want to foil by any means necessary.