SAVE THE SUPREME COURT — SAVE WOMEN'S LIVES

Judge Samuel Alito

With a judicial philosophy similar to that of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Judge Samuel Alito of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Newark, New Jersey wrote a very troubling opinion concerning reproductive rights in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). The Third Circuit in Casey upheld most of the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980's, in an opinion that questioned Roe v. Wade yet struck down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. Alito dissented because he would have gone even further than the rest of the court and would have upheld the spousal notification requirement. He claimed that there was no showing that notification would be an undue burden on women's constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court in Casey refused to accept Alito's view, except for the dissenters who voted to overturn Roe (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas.) Alito also concurred but refused to join the majority opinion in Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, 220 F.3d 127 (3rd Cir. 2000), which struck down New Jersey's so-called "partial birth" abortion law. Alito emphasized that the case was squarely controlled by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, but he carefully avoided endorsing its legal reasoning.

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Federal Judicial Center

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Legal Momentum: The Future of the Supreme Court | PDF version