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

Paragraph 4 of 5

Sentence 6 of 7

This (borrowed) sentence has two claims:

“’Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general, and has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to this Court in particular, ever since.’ Casey, 505 U.S., at 995–996 (opinion of Scalia, J.).”

The claims:

• “Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general.”
• That issue “has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to this Court in particular, ever since.”

Unincorporated quotes are a poor way to advance an argument. This borrows a statement from Justice Scalia and doesn’t do any work with it. Scalia’s two claims are just plopped in here without comment, and since this sentence seems to aim more for style than for substance, I question its usefulness here. Is the first claim true, and how would we know? Is Scalia trying to say that if not for Roe, the issue of abortion wouldn’t have been a big deal? I don’t think that’s possible.

The second claim is certainly true in the sense that every appointment to the Supreme Court since Roe has involved a discussion of the appointees’ stances on abortion, but wouldn’t that also be true if Roe had gone the other way?

It feels like the Dobbs authors just wanted to pay their respects to Justice Scalia, who is an icon of the conservative legal world, but this sentence is both unnecessary and misleading.

I’ll leave these two claims undetermined for now:

• “Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general.”
• That issue “has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to this Court in particular, ever since.”