Demonstrations outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the day of arguments in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19- 1392, challenging a Mississippi law enacted in 2018 that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, on Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
As predictions about how Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization threatens unenumerated Fourteenth Amendment rights involving contraception, sexual freedom and same-sex marriage begin to reshape American politics and law, another set of Dobbs’ dangers—whose contours are broadly illuminated by the Dobbs joint dissent, but whose details have escaped wide public attention—takes on added urgency. How might Dobbs alter women’s Fourteenth Amendment constitutional sex equality rights?
Central to the Dobbs joint dissent—filed by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—is a vision of what Laurence Tribe has dubbed the constitutional liberty-equality “double helix.” The joint dissent explains these interlocking values underwrote Roe and Casey in ways that defeat Dobbs’ insistence that the rulings lack secure constitutional foundations. As decisions upholding constitutional liberty and equality promises—including women’s equal citizenship and the right to participate fully in the nation’s social and economic life—Roe and Casey nest comfortably in sweet-spots of constitutional traditions. Now overruled, the two cases express the American spirit of equal liberty that structures constitutional rights all Americans have to make intimate life-course decisions for themselves, free from overweening state interference.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
