'Unprecedented' - legal experts react to Supreme Court leak

Record ID: 1671218

  • Title: 'Unprecedented' - legal experts react to Supreme Court leak
  • Date: 3rd May 2022
  • Summary: ATLANTA, GEORGIA (MAY 3, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW, PROFESSOR OF LAW, ERIC SEGALL, SAYING: "This opinion, if this ends up being the opinion, is harsher, more dramatic, more far reaching, more out of step with how the court usually operates than even I expected. And I'm the world's biggest pessimist when it comes to the Supreme Court. There is no empathy at all in this opinion that there may be two reasonable sides to this question. No empathy at all."
  • Embargoed: 17th May 2022 21:05
  • Keywords: Roe v Wade Supreme Court abortion leak rights
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Government/Politics,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA008552903052022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: CONTAINS PROFANE LANGUAGE
    The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday (May 3) confirmed that a draft ruling indicating the court may overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide was authentic, as Democrats scrambled to respond to the bombshell news and President Joe Biden vowed to try to protect abortion rights.
    The court in a news release said that it will launch an investigation of how the draft was leaked to the news outlet Politico. It added that the document - authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito - does not represent "the final position of any member" of the high court.
    Legal experts reacted to news of the leak with surprise.
    “For the 20th, the 21st Century, it is unprecedented. For the 20th century, it's unprecedented,” said Georgia State University, College of Law, Professor of Law, Eric Segall.
    The abortion ruling, due by the end of June, would be the court's biggest since former President Donald Trump succeeded in naming three conservative justices to the court - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
    Based on Alito's opinion, the court would find that the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb - between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy - was wrongly decided because the Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.
    “The mood and tenor of the draft opinion suggests they're on their road to finding that a fetus has constitutional protected rights, which would stop blue states or Congress from ever protecting abortion rights,” Segall said. “That's something that some progressives have been cautioning about for a very long time. I never thought that was really going to happen, at least in the next ten years or so. Now, I am not at all sure.”
    "This says you can't you can't rely on having a federal right that says our federal Constitution protects me and gives me as part of my do as a citizen, the right to decide whether or not to have another child, and the consequence is that every state will have to decide whether they want to criminalize abortion or not,” said Carol Sanger, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
    Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics and has been for nearly a half century. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 59% of U.S. adults believed it should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% thought it should be illegal in most or all cases.
    In the absence of federal action, states have passed a raft of abortion-related laws. Republican-led states have moved swiftly, with new restrictions passed this year in six states. Three Democratic-led states this year have passed measures intended to protect abortion rights.
    (Production: Christine Kiernan)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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