Roe is rubbish, says Alito in Dobbs. It’s crap law, based on crap history. I can’t reasonably accuse those people of being culture war partisans, since most of them were appointed by Republican presidents, but I can certainly call them morons. And I will–over and over again.
While the substance of Alito’s opinion is subject to debate by reasonable people, the shrillness of his tone is deplorable. I will add that Scalia’s opinion in Heller, which Alito joined, is definitely crap law based on crap history, and that the Court has now made it worse.
There are two messages here. First, history–particularly history that is 200 years old–is rarely unambiguous, so placing too much reliance on it in your jurisprudence is a mistake. Second, arrogance will receive a response in kind at some point in time. Don’t be surprised if a future Supreme Court uses the same scornful tone on Heller that Alito employed in Dobbs.