What the Dobbs Majority Said at Their Senate Hearings

There are critics out in force today trying to portray the five justices in the Dobbs majority — plus Chief Justice John Roberts, who was a sixth vote for upholding the Mississippi law and partially overturning the Roe/Casey framework — as having misled the Senate in their confirmation hearings. I did a deep dive into this question last month.

The most egregious claim now being circulated is that Amy Coney Barrett testified that Roe and Casey were “so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling.” CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere:

Celeste Headlee:

This is flatly false. Barrett was discussing the academic concept of “super-precedents” — a term used by scholars, but with no actual meaning in the courts — which she defined as cases that are “so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling.” Cases such as Marbury v. Madison or Brown v. Board of Education may still have their critics, but there is no chance of their ever being seriously challenged in court, much less overturned. When asked by Amy Klobuchar whether Roe and Casey fit that definition, however, Barrett explicitly said they did not:

This happened less than two years ago in a nationally televised hearing at which Barrett’s views on the precedential value of Roe were the most newsworthy issue. The truth can be found easily on video with a simple Google search. And yet, they can’t help themselves.