‘I think the most conservative justices dislike much of modern US law and are actively changing it,’ Prof Douglas Laycock says
The US Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown in its blockbuster abortion ruling and other high-profile decisions in recent days that it is fearless when it comes to overturning — and even ignoring — historic precedents.
The conservative justices have become increasingly assertive since the addition of former President Donald Trump's third conservative appointee Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Democratic President Joe Biden's appointment of justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, sworn in to replace retiring fellow liberal justice Stephen Breyer on Thursday, does not change the court's ideological balance.
“When faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: we should not follow it,” Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion in a 2019 case.a Latin term referring to the legal principle that courts should not overturn precedents without a special reason. Conservative justice Samuel Alito seemed to take the same view in the June 24 abortion ruling, writing that the Roe landmark was “egregiously wrong”.
Instead, conservative justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court “long ago abandoned” the prior ruling and subsequent decisions that had built upon it. Liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that nothing in the court's previous cases “support this court's decision to dismiss that precedent entirely.”
Among other major cases next term, the court will hear an appeal by North Carolina Republicans that could give state legislatures far more power over federal elections by limiting the ability of state courts to review their actions.
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