You probably knew that the Supreme Court was largely responsible for the failures of Reconstruction. But did you know that the justices involved were mostly nominated by Republican presidents during and after the Civil War? It’s true! How can that be?
Successful attorneys make lousy revolutionaries for two reasons. First of all, being relatively wealthy, they have a strong vested interest in the existing system. Second, and equally important, their livelihood is based on respect for decisions made by equally intelligent people in the past. Change is supposed to be slow and incremental. Revolution is not part of the equation.
Those are undoubtedly the reasons why the Supreme Court ultimately viewed the Civil War and Reconstruction as a brief and unfortunate blip in the nation’s history instead of a second founding of the republic. Everything was supposed to go back to normal, minus slavery. And that’s what happened for about a hundred years.
The Alito draft opinion in Dobbs is consistent with that line of reasoning. Alito wants to bring back America as it existed immediately prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. He doesn’t want to consider either the broad revolutionary vision that went into the amendment, or the critical changes to the system that occurred afterwards–votes for women, popular votes for the Senate, the Civil Rights Movement, the New Deal, and so on. That’s what makes him a reactionary, and why he has so much company in the judiciary.