Stephen Breyer Archives - Public Seminar

Past Present

Justice Breyer’s Retirement and the Future of the Supreme Court

Past Present Podcast, Episode 311

February 1, 2022 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced he will retire at the end of his term, a move many say is reflective of his pragmatism. Natalia referred to this New York Times piece about Breyer’s effort to eschew ideology and ...

Politics

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Is there incentive to attack the court’s legitimacy?

September 28, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Last week, opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote about the sinking reputation of the United States Supreme Court. With respect to a new abortion law in Texas, which invalidates Roe v. Wade, the Post columnist said that, “The nub of the problem is not that (or not only that) voters are angry that the court allowed ...

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Feminism

Handing Power Back to the Vigilantes

Texas’s new abortion ban erodes the power of the federal government to protect civil rights, and there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much more.

September 7, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ The new anti-abortion law in Texas is not just about abortion; it is about undermining civil rights decisions made by the Supreme Court during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The Supreme Court declined to stop a state law that violates a constitutional right. Since World War II, the Supreme Court has ...

Feminism

Are You Looking for Jane?

From 1965 to 1973, the women of Chicago’s Jane Collective took the right to a safe abortion into their own hands. Literally.

September 6, 2021 • by Heather Booth and Claire Potter

_____ This week, when a Supreme Court majority permitted Texas to eviscerate Roe v. Wade and created a legal path for other states to end legal abortion after six weeks, I dashed off an email to feminist Heather Booth. A lifetime organizer against social injustice, Booth’s work began in the civil rights and anti-war ...

Politics

Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump

A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick

August 27, 2020 • by Dahlia Lithwick and Claire Potter

Yet in the final days of the last session, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, voted with the liberal minority in two key cases. Philosophically committed to consensus-building, this is something Roberts has done at key moments since 2016, raising questions about whether he had taken Kennedy’s ...

North America

Mike Pompeo’s Originalist Foreign Policy

The Commission’s report gives ammunition to partisans who aim to weaken core constitutional protections within the United States

July 23, 2020 • by Duncan Hosie

This justification is a pretext. While pretending to strengthen protection for human rights abroad, the Commission’s report gives ammunition to partisans who aim to weaken core constitutional protections within the United States. Pompeo and the Commission’s report embrace an “originalist” vision of America’s founding. Originalism is a doctrine in constitutional law ...