A few weeks ago I
skewered NRO's legal analyst Ed Whelan for trying to spin Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas as being "neutral" on the right to choose. Whelan wrote:
[T]he Constitution generally does not speak to the question of abortion. Under this substantively neutral position, American citizens would have the constitutional power to determine through their state representatives what the abortion policy in their own states would be. This neutral position -- which three members of the current Court, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas, embrace -- also happens to be the proper reading of the Constitution.
I responded:
The Constitution is "neutral" on abortion is what Roberts will tell us? No kidding. This is news how? Do they expect the Constitution to take a specific position on abortion? Here's a question, is Roberts "neutral" on the right to privacy?. . . Because if the Constitution is "neutral" on abortion, but recognizes a right to privacy (see Griswold), by what right would the State violate a woman's PRIVATE decision on contraceptives and terminating a pregnancy?
Whelan replied:
Well, no, I don't expect the Constitution to take a specific position on abortion -- at least certainly not a pro-abortion position -- because I think it ludicrous to suggest that the drafters or ratifiers of any provision of the Constitution intended to protect abortion from the ordinary democratic processes. For, surely, if they so intended, it would be entirely reasonable for -- indeed, incumbent on -- them to specify (or at least signal in some way) such an extraordinary departure from the basic ground rules of American government.
Now Whelan has a right to believe that these views, which he attributes to Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas (and Roberts), are correct. But he can not in good faith label them "neutral." That is egregious spin. These views are not neutral. They are extremist. In extended, I'll look at the basis of the Roe and Casey decisions so that we can understand how extreme the views of Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and presumably, Roberts, are on privacy and the right to choose.
In
Casey, the Court stated that:
Constitutional protection of the woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy derives from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It declares that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The controlling word in the cases before us is "liberty." Although a literal reading of the Clause might suggest that it governs only the procedures by which a State may deprive persons of liberty, for at least 105 years, since Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 660 -661 (1887), the Clause has been understood to contain a substantive component as well, one "barring certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them." Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331 (1986). As Justice Brandeis (joined by Justice Holmes) observed, [d]espite arguments to the contrary which had seemed to me persuasive, it is settled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth [505 U.S. 833, 847] Amendment applies to matters of substantive law as well as to matters of procedure. Thus all fundamental rights comprised within the term liberty are protected by the Federal Constitution from invasion by the States. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 373 (1927) (concurring opinion). [T]he guaranties of due process, though having their roots in Magna Carta's "per legem terrae" and considered as procedural safeguards "against executive usurpation and tyranny," have in this country "become bulwarks also against arbitrary legislation." Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 541 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting from dismissal on jurisdictional grounds) (quoting Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 532 (1884)).
The most familiar of the substantive liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment are those recognized by the Bill of Rights. We have held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates most of the Bill of Rights against the States. See, e.g., Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 147 -148 (1968).
But what of Whelan's point that only those rights specifically and expressly guaranteed by the FOUNDERS are Constitutionally protected? What of his 'the Constitution protects only expressly enumerated rights' line? Listen to the Casey Court:
It is tempting, as a means of curbing the discretion of federal judges, to suppose that liberty encompasses no more than those rights already guaranteed to the individual against federal interference by the express provisions of the first eight amendments to the Constitution. See Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 68 -92 (1947) (Black, J., dissenting). But of course this Court has never accepted that view.
It is also tempting, for the same reason, to suppose that the Due Process Clause protects only those practices, defined at the most specific level, that were protected against government interference by other rules of law when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. See Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110, 127 -128, n. 6 (1989) (opinion of SCALIA, J.). But such a view would be inconsistent with our law. It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter. We have vindicated this principle before. Marriage is mentioned nowhere in the Bill of Rights, and interracial marriage was illegal [505 U.S. 833, 848] in most States in the 19th century, but the Court was no doubt correct in finding it to be an aspect of liberty protected against state interference by the substantive component of the Due Process Clause in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (relying, in an opinion for eight Justices, on the Due Process Clause). Similar examples may be found in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 94 -99 (1987); in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 684 -686 (1977); in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 481 -482 (1965), as well as in the separate opinions of a majority of the Members of the Court in that case, id. at 486-488 (Goldberg, J., joined by Warren, C.J., and Brennan, J., concurring) (expressly relying on due process), id. at 500-502 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment) (same), id. at 502-507, (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment) (same); in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534 -535 (1925); and in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 -403 (1923).
The bottom line? It is not neutral but extremist to hold the view of the Constitution Whelan ascribes to Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, and now Roberts. As the Casey Court stated:
Neither the Bill of Rights nor the specific practices of States at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment marks the outer limits of the substantive sphere of liberty which the Fourteenth Amendment protects. See U.S. Const., Amdt. 9. As the second Justice Harlan recognized:
[T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This "liberty" is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . and which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment.
Why is this significant? Here's why:
Justice Harlan wrote these words in addressing an issue the full Court did not reach in Poe v. Ullman, but the Court adopted his position four Terms later in Griswold v. Connecticut, supra. In Griswold, we held that the Constitution does not permit a State to forbid a married couple to use contraceptives. That same freedom was later guaranteed, under the Equal Protection Clause, for unmarried couples. See Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972). Constitutional protection was extended to the sale and distribution of contraceptives in Carey v. Population Services International, supra. It is settled now, as it was when the Court heard arguments in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution places limits on a State's right to interfere with a person's most basic decisions about family and parenthood, see Carey v. Population Services International, supra; Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977); Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra; Loving v. Virginia, supra; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra; Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra; Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, as well as bodily integrity, see, e.g., Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 221 -222 (1990); Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753 (1985); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952).
The inescapable fact is that adjudication of substantive due process claims may call upon the Court in interpreting the Constitution to exercise that same capacity which, by tradition, courts always have exercised: reasoned judgment. Its boundaries are not susceptible of expression as a simple rule. That does not mean we are free to invalidate state policy choices with which we disagree; yet neither does it permit us to shrink from the duties of our office.
Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas disagree with this consensus view, of over 100 year vintage. That is not "neutral." That is extremist.
If Roberts hold this same extremist view, he is unfit for the Supreme Court.