The Catholic Majority of the US Supreme Court
April 20, 2007 · By Tom Cerber
The US Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding a ban on partial birth abortions (though note the qualifications) will undoubtedly raise some clucking over the fact that a majority of the SC justices are now Roman Catholic. Some will even suggest this is unconstitutional, though I disagree.
Politico.com has some interesting comments on this issue:
Both of President Bush’s appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, are Catholic. They joined a court that already included Catholics Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
David Masci, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, said it would be easy to assume “this ‘Catholic majority’ is working in line with the church’s teachings, which are very clear, and is going to roll back Roe v. Wade.”
But that assumption would be wrong, Masci added. He pointed out that one of the court’s strongest supporters of abortion rights, the late justice William Brennan, was himself a Roman Catholic.
More relevant to the future of abortion law, perhaps, is the fact that Kennedy has repeatedly made clear that he backs abortion rights. He wrote Wednesday’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood — and explicitly said he continues to back Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 case in which the court reaffirmed a woman’s right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Steven Wermiel, an adjunct professor at the American University’s Washington College of Law, says it would actually be possible to read Wednesday’s decision as suggesting that Roberts and Alito might support abortion rights. After all, they declined to sign a separate opinion by Scalia and Thomas restating their opposition to abortion rights on principle.
“Roberts and Alito simply joined Kennedy’s opinion, not saying anything about whether access to abortion should or shouldn’t exist,” Wermiel said.
This isn’t the last we’ve heard about this issue.
Incidently, Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, America’s alleged top “theocon”, has reservations about the decision.
UPDATE: More discussion at NLT.
Very interesting issue, indeed.
I may be naive, but I tend to believe that jurists who reach the Supreme Court have by this point in their career thought through and reconciled their personal beliefs with the need to fairly and objectively administer a complex system of justice that will occasionally yield results that run counter to their own values.
Having said that, I have noted with some concern a growing inclination on the extreme Catholic right to censure political figures for not adhering rigidly to a Vatican-prescribed program. I’m thinking of the calls for the denial of sacraments to Catholics like John Kerry and Paul Martin for failing to toe the Vatican line. The Supremes aren’t subject to the same kind of political pressure (although, of course, an elected judiciary would be) – still, it’s a bit nervous-making.
Bal: Great observation. I suspect there’s not a little bit of great expectation among conservatives, and among conservative Catholics, that this court will overturn Roe v. Wade. From what I gather from skimming the commentary and decision, I don’t think that’s very likely. Banning partial birth abortion is a long way from denying a woman’s right to an abortion. That’s what I gather from Roberts and Alito’s move to sign with Kennedy instead of Scalia and Thomas.
If the SC refuses to overturn Roe, would bishops weigh in like some have done with elected officials in the US? Hard to say. It would be a riskier move for them than pressuring elected officials. I would suspect the public backlash would be greater against the bishops than by going after elected officials. Attacking judges looks more like attacking an institution, whereas attacking specific elected officials doesn’t carry the same connotation – you can attack Sen. Kennedy without seeming to attack Congress as an institution. Harder to make that distinction with SC judges. Bishops would have to weigh how much such an attack would harm the church over the long term.
Since Christians founded the USA and for which it was built then this is only consistent with the very principle of the existance of the nation.
RC: Too simplistic, especially in light of Art. 6.3 of the Constitution.
[...] there’s a lot of tut-tutting over the supposedly Catholic majority on the US Supreme Court, which some fear will cause it to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ted Olsen notes how [...]