Question for our lawyers, Roe v Wade is protected somewhat in lower courts by

[Eliot Rosewater]

precedent, please tell us how that protection could go by the wayside and Roe could find itself in front of the SC within a year, lets say.

[unblock]

1. not a lawyer, but i think one year is a bit too tight for overturning roe.

i don't think overturning it could possibly happen unless and until kennedy retires the summer (or worse, there's a liberal vacancy) and there's a replacement with another gorsuch.

then, they would have to choose an appropriate case to hear no earlier than october, the start of the new year for the supreme court.

keep in mind that no one's really expecting to be able to overturn roe at the moment, so there would have to be an appropriate case and briefs would have to be rewritten to go for the full monty. then the supremes would have to review and hear the case and eventually decide it.

i really can't see all that happening by march 2019.

now, two years? all bets are off.


honestly, though, i don't know that republican leaders really even want it overturned completely. i think they lose a huge fundraising angle if it's "job done". they're better off, politically, making it ridiculously restricted but still technically legal. that keeps the fanatics giving them money.

[HopeAgain]

2. Precedent changes everything from the top down

So if the SCOTUS decides say, to completely reverse Roe v. Wade and say reproductive rights are not protected by the Constitution, then all lower court precedents would be vulnerable to being set aside themselves because they would be based on what would no longer be the law of the land.

It's like Plessy v. Ferguson getting overturned by Brown v. Board. There were a whole slew of Jim Crow cases following Plessy that became bad law after Brown and therefore bad precedents.

Some states have held there is privacy protection under their own constitutions as well. Obviously in those cases, it would be harder to overturn.

[mr_liberal]

3. An anti-abortion law gets passed in some state and even if ruled unconstitutional by a lower

federal court they appeal to the supreme court. Then if the new conservative (minus Kennedy) supreme court overrules the lower court and lets the law stand that becomes the new precedent and other states can pass similar laws.

[Eliot Rosewater]

4. Thanks for this info.

Someone somewhere who I wont respond to said it couldn't happen for at least 10 yrs.

While I know that person has an agenda, others will read that and believe it.

[Gothmog]

5. It depends on the grounds used to strike down Roe

Roe established a federal right to an abortion. If this decision is overturned, then the matter will go back to the states. Many states will ban abortion but some states will not. Pre-Roe, women would travel to state where they could get an abortion.

If the SCOTUS ruled that the fetuses were persons, then this could mean that abortions would be illegal in all 50 states. This ruling is not likely in my opinion