SC Watcher: Court Will Uphold Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

Patterico has the key quote, which is a good place to start.

Once you're done there, you'd do well to go Confirm Them's interview with court watcher Jan Crawford Greenberg, who opines:

doubt my predictions will surprise any of you who’ve read my book (and for those of you who haven’t, I highly recommend it). In Supreme Conflict, I argue that George W. Bush succeeded—where past Republican presidents failed—in achieving clear change on the Court. The Roberts Court, with Justice Alito replacing Sandra Day O’Connor, is more conservative than the Rehnquist Court. Alito is more conservative than key swing voter O’Connor; Roberts is, if anything, more of a principled judicial conservative than Rehnquist. And both Roberts and Alito will be highly effective in making their points without pushing away a wavering justice. We’ll see that this term.

It's not just partial-birth abortion. In three other hot-button cases -- school integration, a suit to compel the EPA to reduce global warming, and McCain-Feingold -- Greenberg expects the court to tack to the right. (I'm not up on what these cases are about, but I would guess, for example, the McCain-Feingold case is not about the rubbishing the whole law as unconstitutional, but challenging one or two particular overreaches of the law.)

Greenberg also faults both the White House and Bill Frist for not responding aggressively enough to the constant Democratic fillibusters, allowing the liberals to gain confidence that they'd pay no price for their obstructionism (which turns out to be the way it, well, turned out). A man I have little use for -- Trent Lott -- would have been a much more effective opponent of the fillibusters had he still been in a leadership position, Greenberg claims.

posted by Ace at 01:49 PM

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