{"id":939,"date":"2022-03-06T13:28:10","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T18:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print\/volume-20-issue-1-winter-2022\/misreading-and-transforming-casey-for-dobbs\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:44","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:44","slug":"misreading-and-transforming-casey-for-dobbs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-20-issue-1-winter-2022\/misreading-and-transforming-casey-for-dobbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Misreading and Transforming Casey for Dobbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Dobbs<\/em>, Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to uphold a fifteen-week abortion ban by overturning <em>Roe<\/em> and <em>Casey<\/em>. Some have proposed that the Court could instead uphold the ban under <em>Casey\u2019s<\/em> undue-burden test, on the ground that a law that leaves women a fair opportunity to choose whether to abort (here, up to the fifteenth week) creates no undue burden. Many have noted that this proposal would flout <em>Casey\u2019s <\/em>rejection of undue burdens until viability, which comes long after fifteen weeks. This essay focuses on another problem: that the proposal would transform the meaning of the phrase \u201cundue burden\u201d itself, and with it the entire logic of abortion rights. Whether ultimately sound or not, a fair-opportunity ruling could not rest on stare decisis.<\/p>\n<p><em>Casey<\/em> uses \u201cundue burden\u201d in a synchronic sense, referring to laws that make abortion too hard to get at this or that point in pregnancy. By contrast, a fair-opportunity ruling would read \u201cundue burden\u201d as a diachronic test, which courts could apply only by looking at the law\u2019s impact over this or that period of time. (Specifically, <em>Casey<\/em> uses \u201cundue burden\u201d to refer to any incidental regulation of the procedure at some point that prevents abortions almost as much as a ban at that point; <em>Dobbs<\/em> would read the phrase to denote actual bans that cover too long a stretch of the pregnancy.) And the change would be more than semantic. <em>Dobbs\u2019s<\/em> \u201cundue burden\u201d concept would perform a completely different doctrinal function and bring in tow a novel constitutional rationale for the resulting abortion right. Leaving nothing of <em>Casey\u2019s<\/em> (or <em>Roe\u2019s<\/em>) logic intact, this approach could not claim support in stare decisis, whatever its other merits. The contrary impression is traceable to enduring misreadings of <em>Casey<\/em> by supporters and critics alike. So, clarifying exactly why <em>Dobbs<\/em> cannot rely on <em>Casey<\/em> will shed new light on that pivotal precedent.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/georgetown.box.com\/s\/jb1lmfkjdnmhvnl2eunggjnnmgp0ka12\">Keep Reading Misreading and Transforming\u00a0<em>Casey<\/em> for\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Dobbs, Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to uphold a fifteen-week abortion ban by overturning Roe and Casey. Some have proposed that the Court could instead uphold the ban [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"parent":923,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-939","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1919,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/939\/revisions\/1919"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}