It has been five months since the Supreme Court issued its historic decision overturning Roe v. Wade’s decades-long ruling on abortion. Dobbs restored our constitutional order and, in the process, created space to build a culture of life. Indeed, there is much for which to be thankful.
Understanding the important role of originalism — the method of judicial interpretation used by the Court in Dobbs to conclude definitively that there is no constitutional right to abortion — cannot be overstated. In the latest issue of the Notre Dame Law Review, Joel Alicea of Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law Professor offers an affirmative argument for originalism from within the natural-law tradition. Alicea is co-director of the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and a scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. He also served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Dobbs decision.
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