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

Paragraph 5 of 11

Sentence 2 of 4

Two more claims in the next sentence:

“These articles have been discredited,38 and it has come to light that even members of Jane Roe’s legal team did not regard them as serious scholarship.”

The claims:

• “These articles have been discredited.”
• “[I]t has come to light that even members of Jane Roe’s legal team did not regard them as serious scholarship.”

I have no doubt that the articles have been disputed, and end note 36 provides a number of sources to demonstrate that. It will take some investigation to determine if that disputation amounts to “discredit,” but that is basically the theme of this stage of this project. The amount of information packed into every sentence of this decision is immense, and I don’t know if there’s a living human who could have read through this document and legitimately thought, “I can account for all of the information presented here and my judgment is therefore thorough and accurate.” I may never get to that point, but the slow process of assessing Dobbs bit by bit is teaching me intellectual humility.

Humility aside, my snark remains: “It has come to light” is an ominous phrase. What is that doing there? Beyond that, I’m interested in eventually reading those articles to see just how serious (or unserious) they are.

Two more undetermined claims:

• “These articles have been discredited.”
• “[I]t has come to light that even members of Jane Roe’s legal team did not regard them as serious scholarship.”

End note 38:

“For critiques of Means’s work, see, e.g., Dellapenna 143–152, 325–331; Keown 3–12; J. Finnis, ‘Shameless Acts’ in Colorado: Abuse of Scholarship in Constitutional Cases, 7 Academic Questions 10, 11–12 (1994); R. Destro, Abortion and the Constitution: The Need for a Life-Protective Amendment, 63 Cal. L. Rev. 1250, 1267–1282 (1975); R. Byrn, An American Tragedy: The Supreme Court on Abortion, 41 Ford. L. Rev. 807, 814–829 (1973).”