Carhart's possible legacy

Apo points out that Brock Landers points out that the five justices who voted to uphold the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban" are all Catholics.

Separation of church and state, anyone? Ring a bell?

Surely it's also significant that the only woman on the court wrote a hell of a dissent. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as always, warms my heart. Read her full dissent here if you need, at least, to feel like there's still someone on the court who gets it.

When "a statute burdens constitutional rights and all that can be said on its behalf is that it is the vehicle that legislators have chosen for expressing their hostility to those rights, the burden is undue." Stenberg, 530 U. S., at 952 (GINSBURG, J., concurring) (quoting Hope Clinic v. Ryan, 195 F. 3d 857, 881 (CA7 1999) (Posner, C. J., dissenting)).

Ed Kilgore at TPM Cafe suggests that the clarity of Ginsburg's dissent means that in the long run this opinion isn't predictive of future developments. Hope he's right. But with the deeply admirable Justice Ginsburg in her mid 70s now, I worry.

Good analysis at LGM, too.