Law

Deconstructing Dobbs

Whether or not one sees the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision as barely concealed theocracy, it fails to provide any coherent legal analysis of why the right to abortion is not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

September 22, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Irish Lesson

If the purpose of abortion bans is to actually reduce the rate at which women terminate pregnancies, the Irish experience shows how utterly ineffectual they are.

August 18, 2022 issue

Robert Kuttner

Free Markets, Besieged Citizens

Why did Democratic presidents embrace an economic credo that annihilated their own public philosophy and its appeal to the electorate?

July 21, 2022 issue

Jed S. Rakoff

The Rich Get Richer

The law professor Marc Steinberg lays out a series of reasonable proposals for reforming securities law, but Congress is unlikely to act.

June 23, 2022 issue

James Oakes

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

In The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman argues that the Confederate states had a constitutional right to secede and that Lincoln violated the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves.

May 12, 2022 issue

Liza Batkin

Ruling by Fear

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices paint a dark portrait of society, danger lurking in every shadow, to justify overturning a New York gun control law.

June 25, 2022

Duncan Hosie and Reva Siegel

The Remaking of the Second Amendment

The Supreme Court’s expanding interpretation of the Second Amendment threatens longstanding democratic authority to enact gun safety measures.

June 10, 2022

Leah Aronowsky

The Limits of Climate Change Litigation

For two decades, climate scientists have been developing tools to pin the blame for hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves on fossil fuel companies. But judges say climate change is too big for court.

November 3, 2021

Essays by Laurence Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe

Deconstructing Dobbs

September 22, 2022 issue

Laurence H. Tribe

Politicians in Robes

Why does Stephen Breyer continue to insist that the Supreme Court is apolitical?

March 10, 2022 issue

Judge Antonin Scalia in his office, shortly before his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., July 28, 1986

Laurence H. Tribe

The Scalia Myth

The selection of a justice to serve for life on the nation’s highest court is far too consequential to be treated either as an abstract referendum on legal methodology or as a game to be played for partisan advantage.

February 27, 2016

Laurence H. Tribe

Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness

Traditional Supreme Court precedent may depend too much on substantive due process to safeguard human rights. “A better system of reason,” argued Charles Black, may be found in the Declaration of Independence, the Ninth Amendment, and the Privileges or Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

September 24, 1998 issue

Laurence H. Tribe

The Latest

Linda Greenhouse

A Powerful, Forgotten Dissent

Stephen Breyer’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s Parents Involved case has proved prophetic about the decision’s consequences for racial integration in public schools.

October 6, 2022 issue

David Cole

Egregiously Wrong

In several of the term’s most controversial cases, the Court’s new majority applied originalism to disastrous effect.

August 18, 2022 issue

Paisley Currah

What Sex Does

For transgender people in the United States, the sheer number of institutions with discrete authority to define sex ensnares us in Kafkaesque contradictions.

May 27, 2022

Christine Henneberg

The End of Roe

A symposium of writers on a future without the right to reproductive freedom.

June 9, 2022 issue

Melissa Gira Grant

Policing Womanhood

For groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the erosion of abortion rights and trans rights are complementary pathways to building a Christian nation.

May 15, 2022

Elizabeth A. Reese

Unsteady Ground

Native people have known for a long time that in this country, rights—whether to remain, to pray, to vote, or even to live—are impermanent and fickle things, subject to revision by those in power.

May 14, 2022

Sherrilyn Ifill

Stealing the Crown Jewels

Justice Alito purports to place the future of abortion in the hands of women voters—despite abetting the disenfranchisement of Black and Latina women.

May 12, 2022

Sue Halpern

Before the Fall

As evangelicals came into the GOP tent, Republican voters and politicians traded women’s bodies for political power.

May 11, 2022

Meaghan Winter

Weak Protagonists

While purporting to be the party of reproductive rights, Democrats have consistently failed to take a strong stance on abortion. Can they still stand up to minority rule?

May 10, 2022