Idaho Abortion Case: Supreme Court Should Have Finished Job

Justice Amy Coney Barrett is getting a lot of grief in some quarters of the Right this week for backing the Supreme Court away from the merits of some of the term’s biggest cases. Today’s decision to drop Moyle v. United States, the Idaho abortion case, from the Court’s docket adds to those complaints. In Moyle, the dissenting justices were right that the Court should have kept and decided the case. There’s a strong argument as well that the Court ought to have proceeded to the merits in yesterday’s disposal of Murthy v. Missouri on standing grounds and a case to be made that the Court was wrong when it unanimously threw out the challenge to the FDA’s relaxation of rules on the abortion pill.

But all three cases did present vexing challenges to reaching the merits, and conservatives should take seriously the proper limits of the judicial role. Principled disagreements among the conservative justices on judicial-process questions — standing, mootness, ripeness, emergency relief, remedies, severability, the weight of precedent — are nothing new. Justice Barrett, an academic by background specializing in theories of jurisprudence, has her own strong and considered views on the proper guardrails for when and how the Court should decide cases. Those views are emerging more strongly now that she has settled onto the Court for three full terms.

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett is getting a lot of grief in some quarters of the Right this week for backing the Supreme Court away from the merits of some of the term’s biggest cases. Today’s decision to drop Moyle v. United States, the Idaho abortion case, from the Court’s docket adds to those complaints. In Moyle, the dissenting justices were right that the Court should have kept and decided the case. There’s a strong argument as well that the Court ought to have proceeded to the merits in yesterday’s disposal of Murthy v. Missouri on standing grounds and a case to be made that the Court was wrong when it unanimously threw out the challenge to the FDA’s relaxation of rules on the abortion pill.

But all three cases did present vexing challenges to reaching the merits, and conservatives should take seriously the proper limits of the judicial role. Principled disagreements among the conservative justices on judicial-process questions — standing, mootness, ripeness, emergency relief, remedies, severability, the weight of precedent — are nothing new. Justice Barrett, an academic by background specializing in theories of jurisprudence, has her own strong and considered views on the proper guardrails for when and how the Court should decide cases. Those views are emerging more strongly now that she has settled onto the Court for three full terms.