Dorf on Law: Settled Law, Precedent on Precedent, and Abortion: What We Learned and Didn't Learn About Judge Kavanaugh's Views on Abortion

Dorf on Law: Settled Law, Precedent on Precedent, and Abortion: What We Learned and Didn't Learn About Judge Kavanaugh's Views on Abortion
by Michael C. Dorf

Accordingly, I think the most generous way to read Kavanaugh is as having been misleading albeit not downright dishonest in saying he now sees Roe as "settled law." In his own mind in 2003, "settled law" meant law that is not at all likely to be overruled; he had reason to think that Maine Senator Susan Collins would take him to be saying that about Roe now when he called it settled law; and yet, even though he didn't like the use of the term "settled law" to mean law that is only settled until the Supreme Court unsettles it, that was the definition he secretly had in mind when he used the term to describe Roe to Senator Collins. If so, I guess that's not technically a lie, but it's hardly the whole truth.