Watch US Supreme Court Justice Alito Mock Critics of Abortion Rights-Gutting Dobbs Ruling
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US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has often been referred to as the high court’s most conservative justice. The Catholic justice has ruled in favor of abortion in the past, but penned the recent opinion that eviscerated that right at a federal level.
Speaking last week at an event in Rome, Italy, Alito took on some of his international critics who got fired up in response to his majority opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson, a decision handed down last month that overturned the federal right to an abortion in the United States.
“Over the last few weeks, since I have had the honor this term of writing, I think, the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders, who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law,” Alito said, referring to Dobbs as “the decision whose name may not be spoken,” a reference to Harry Potter villain Voldemort.
In his Rome speech on religious liberty, Justice Alito mocked "foreign leaders" who condemned his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, including Boris Johnson, Macron, Trudeau, and ... Prince Harry.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 28, 2022
Of Boris, Alito quipped: "He paid the price." https://t.co/NPqalw0KA6 pic.twitter.com/xC0qguZ31n
“One of these was former [UK] Prime Minister Boris Johnson - but he paid the price,” Alito said, to laughter and cheers from the crowd. Others he mentioned included French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, adding that “what really wounded me” was when Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, seemed to compare the Dobbs ruling and Russia’s special operation in Ukraine during a speech at the United Nations.
At that, however, the crowd did not laugh. Alito then changed the subject.
The rest of his speech mostly focused on religious liberty, which he characterized as under attack around the globe. However, he did not address one common criticism of the “religious liberty” justification for banning abortion: that under Jewish halacha, abortion access is a necessity because of Jewish prioritization of the mother’s life over all other considerations.
Supreme Court justices typically try to refrain from wading into the muddy waters of partisan politics. However, this isn’t the first time Alito has jumped into the fray: last October, he took aim at critics of a series of overnight snap rulings informally referred to as “shadow docket” decisions. The decisions did not feature oral arguments, with the justices rendering consequential rulings in a handful of hours on issues including the eviction moratorium, US immigration policies, and a Texas abortion restriction law that seemingly violated the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling.
“The catchy and sinister term ‘shadow docket’ has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” Alito said in a speech at Notre Dame Law, the same institution that hosted him last week in Rome. “And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”
"The truth of the matter is there was nothing new or shadowy about the procedures we followed in those cases," he added.
Two of Alito’s conservative colleagues, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas, also spoke out last year in response to rising criticism that the court has become more political since acquiring a decisive 6-3 conservative majority.
