The Dobbs v. Jackson Case — Part 1

On this week’s episode, we preview Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case challenging Mississippi’s law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, which comes before the Supreme Court on December 1. The issue in the case is whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional—and the outcome could challenge the future of Supreme Court precedent on abortion from Roe v. Wade to Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In another recent case, Justice Kavanaugh laid out three criteria for overturning a precedent believed to be wrongly decided. In this episode, we use these criteria to examine the arguments on either side, and then next week we’ll be back with a part two, recapping the oral arguments.

Host Jeffrey Rosen is joined by Mary Ziegler, the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law and author of Abortion and the Law in America: A Legal History, Roe v. Wade to the Present, and O. Carter Snead, professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

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