Below is a round-up of the latest from the Battle for the Constitution: a special project on the constitutional debates in American life, in partnership with The Atlantic.
Justice Kavanaugh’s Empty Democratic Promise
By David Litt, former speechwriter for Barack Obama
David Litt argues that — contrary to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s claim during oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allowing state legislatures to create their own abortion regimes would enhance democracy and would allow the Supreme Court to be “scrupulously neutral” — returning abortion to the states would actually be antidemocratic, because gerrymandering at the state district level, sustained by the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, would allow conservative minorities to impose their will over liberal majorities in many states.
