Don't they teach a logic course somewhere in pre law?
Legal expert finds “fatal flaw” in Samuel Alito’s leaked abortion opinion | Salon.com
"That standard, known as the
Glucksberg test, is lifted from the 1997 case upholding Washington's ban on assisted suicide," Lisa Rubin
wrote. She then explained why
Washington v. Glucksberg is key.
"But what makes Justice Alito's analysis truly disingenuous is its distortion of the one case on which it depends:
Glucksberg. In that case, the Court found a person's liberty interest, as recognized by
Casey, was not limitless and did not guarantee terminally-ill adults the right to end their own lives. Yet in distinguishing physician-assisted suicide from 'those personal activities and decisions that this Court has identified as so deeply rooted in our history and traditions, or so fundamental to our concept of constitutionally ordered liberty, that they are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment,' the Court left no doubt which decisions and history it meant," she explained. "In fact, it expressly lists them in a footnote, as
the clinic's lawyer reminded Justice Alito at oral argument, that includes
Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a right to contraception;
Loving v. Virginia, which guaranteed the freedom to marry a person of another race; and
Roe itself, noting that that opinion 'stat[ed] that at the Founding and throughout the 19th century, 'a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy.''"
Rubin then explained that Alito's legal reasoning did not add up.
"In other words,
Obergefell treats
Glucksberg as wholly inappropriate for any analysis of marriage and intimacy rights. In fact, in dissenting from
Obergefell, Justice Roberts — who, as of this week, had not joined Justice Alito's opinion in Dobbs — went even further, complaining that
Obergefell 'effectively overrule[d]
Glucksberg.' So if
Glucksberg itself held that decisions like
Loving v. Virginia,
Griswold v. Connecticut,
Roe, and
Casey, which established our rights to interracial marriage, contraception, and abortion, fulfilled its standard and
Obergefell distinguished
Glucksberg as irrelevant to marriage and intimacy, how can Justice Alito justify overruling
Roe with a case that, by its own terms, recognizes its vitality?" she wondered.
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