24 June—Four years ago today the United States Supreme Court decided in its ultimate, indisputable, and infinite arrogance that women do not have a constitutional right to abortion. The entirely expected decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization enthusiastically trashed SCOTUS’s ultimately, indisputably, and infinitely arrogant 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that women do in fact have a constitutional right to abortion, thereby superseding and striking down any and all state laws to the contrary, which was fortified by the Supremes’ Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision in 1992.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wasn’t appointed to SCOTUS until 1993 and was a staunch albeit judicially restrained pro-choice advocate and supporter of abortion rights among other good causes, nevertheless quite rightly criticized the Roe v. Wade decision as judicial overreach. While she didn’t insist that the right to abortion should have been enacted by explicit legislation, she did reckon that the Roe ruling should have been founded on different constitutional principles

Put simply, judicial overreach occurs when judges effectively make laws rather than simply interpreting them, thus interfering with, disrupting, or even negating the roles of the executive and legislative branches of government, exceeding courts’ constitutional judicial authority and compromising—unbalancing—the Constitution’s implicit balance of power. (Like the president usurping the functions and powers of the legislative and judicial branches. But we won’t go there.)

However they may rationalize it, then, many judges at all levels overreach whenever they think they can get away with it. A little power does a lot to inflate an ego and magnify one’s hubris. It’s human nature. To be sure, the appeals process is supposed to put a brake on judicial overreach, inter alia. But in practice and reality the overreach of appellate courts and judges is directly proportional to their juridical position.

And the appellate court and judges in the highest juridical position, the ultimate court of last resort, the superior authority whose decisions—for better or worse—are final and binding on all other courts, is of course the United States Supreme Court. Well, as we’ve seen, SCOTUS decisions are final and binding only until they aren’t.

Stare decisis—let the decision stand—is the doctrine of precedent, of making final decisions, the practice of not reversing, vacating, or overruling prior decisions—for better or worse. For the record, SCOTUS has reversed, vacated, or overruled its own decisions—for better or worse—well over 200 times.

Also for the record, since SCOTUS overruled and reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, legal abortions in the United States have increased by almost 25 percent. And if more people practiced continence and chastity—or at least contraception—fewer abortions would be necessary . . .