Publication Date
3-2023
Document Type
Comment
Abstract
On May 2, 2022, an anonymous leaker released Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The opinion, dated February 10, overruled the Supreme Court of the United States’s landmark abortion rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey to hold that the U.S. Constitution did not protect a right to obtain an abortion. Following vociferous criticism, the Court decided the case on June 24, 2022, issuing an opinion functionally identical to the leaked draft. Now, after decades of contrary precedent, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (Due Process Clause) is interpreted not to protect the right to obtain an abortion. The holding is clear, but an unanswered—and perhaps more consequential—question is what influence Dobbs will have on the Court’s future unenumerated rights cases.
Recommended Citation
Mullinax, Zachary
(2023)
"Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Unenumerated Rights After Justice Thomas’s Dobbs Concurrence,"
Mercer Law Review: Vol. 74:
No.
2, Article 12.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol74/iss2/12