As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Paragraph 1 of 2

Sentence 2 of 3

This thought continues with a sentence comprising three claims:

“The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries,’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 594 (2008), reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least ‘a heinous misdemeanor,’ 2 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 129–130 (1803), and that edition also included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule, 5 id., at 200–201.”

Just for readability’s sake, here’s the quote without citations:

“The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least ‘a heinous misdemeanor’ [. . .] and that edition also included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule.”

And here are the claims:

• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’
• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least ‘a heinous misdemeanor’
• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule.”

The first claim is pretty frivolous, but let’s address it anyway:

• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’” was written by “the law professor and former Antifederalist St. George Tucker.”

And here’s the support in Heller:

“As the most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries (by the law professor and former Antifederalist St. George Tucker) made clear in the notes to the description of the arms right, Americans understood the ‘right of self-preservation’ as permitting a citizen to ‘repe[l] force by force’ when ‘the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.’

That claim appears as advertised in Heller, but I’m not going to take the Heller Court’s word on that edition’s relative importance. And even if it’s true—so what? Undetermined and irrelevant.

The second and third claims are a bit (but not much) more substantial:

• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least ‘a heinous misdemeanor’
• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule.”

Even though I’ve found the document online, and Dobbs provides page numbers, I’m not seeing the passages in question. I’m going to mark these undetermined as well, and maybe I’ll get back to this if it becomes significant.

So three undetermined claims:

• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’
• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] reported Blackstone’s statement that abortion of a quick child was at least ‘a heinous misdemeanor’
• “The ‘most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries’ [. . .] included Blackstone’s discussion of the proto-felony-murder rule.”