It’s ‘potential’ Dobbs might be overruled someday
Retiring US Supreme Court docket Affiliate Justice, Stephen Breyer, attends the 2022 Supreme Court docket Fellows Program Annual Lecture offered by the Legislation Library of Congress and the Supreme Court docket Fellows Program, on February 17, 2022, in Washington, DC.
Evan Vucci | AFP | Getty Photos
WASHINGTON — Former Supreme Court docket Justice Stephen Breyer stated it is “potential” the Supreme Court docket might someday overrule its 2022 choice in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being, which itself overruled Roe v. Wade.
“However who is aware of?” added Breyer, chatting with moderator Kristen Welker on NBC Information’ “Meet the Press.”
The previous justice additionally spoke in regards to the leak of the bulk’s choice to overturn Roe, which preceded the official ruling by a number of weeks, calling it “unfortunate.”
Breyer additionally sidestepped questions on a number of cases earlier than the court docket this 12 months involving former President Donald Trump.
Requested about one Trump case coming earlier than the court docket relating to the previous president’s claim that he should be immune from legal prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Breyer stated he would not remark and did not have sufficient info to type an opinion.
“My goodness, you can also make errors simply by saying what your preliminary opinion is. And my goodness, how usually it actually happens,” Breyer stated, including: “I am not simply making an attempt to get out of the query, as a result of I can get out of the query by simply saying I am not going to reply the query.”
Nonetheless, Breyer, who was appointed by President Invoice Clinton and served on the court docket from 1994 to 2022, is not a stranger to evaluating circumstances in the course of presidential election years that might have main penalties for the end result of the election.
In 2000, Breyer weighed the Bush v. Gore case and agreed with a 7-2 majority decision that the strategy for recounting ballots in Florida’s presidential election was unconstitutional. However he dissented from a majority opinion that discovered Florida did not have time to conduct a constitutional recount.
“They should not have taken [the case] up,” Breyer informed Welker. “That is what I thought of Bush v. Gore.”
He added, “I stated, ‘They should not have taken up the opinion. And now, having taken it up, I feel they need to resolve it the opposite manner.’ That was my view, all proper? But it surely was a view reached after a substantial quantity of labor.”
Breyer spoke to NBC Information’ “Meet the Press” forward of the discharge of his e book “Studying the Structure: Why I Selected Pragmatism, Not Textualism,” wherein he lays out his case in opposition to an originalist interpretation of the Structure.
“It is very enticing,” Breyer stated, describing textualism as “easy.”
“All it’s a must to do is learn this. Fabulous. You have received the reply. Yeah, simply learn it, and it is easy,” he stated.
“You say, ‘Sounds good, sounds good.’ But it surely would not work very nicely, in my view. And that is why I’ve spent a 12 months and a half making an attempt to clarify why,” Breyer added.
