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Unsettled Law: Social-Movement Conflict, Stare Decisis, And Roe V. Wade, Mary Ziegler

Connecticut Law Review

With President Donald Trump’s third Supreme Court nomination, the reexamination of Roe v. Wade has become a probability. An increasingly conservative Court will almost certainly not embrace the idea of abortion rights. Instead, the fate of abortion rights will likely turn on the meaning of stare decisis, a doctrine requiring the Court to pay some deference to its past decisions. Stare decisis has recently played a starring role in abortion jurisprudence. In his controlling concurrence in June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo, Chief Justice Roberts invoked stare decisis while gutting the substantive rule written into the precedent to which he …