A Trump Judge Tips the Balance, but Things Stay the Same, by Hadley Arkes

By Hadley Arkes, The Catholic Thing, April 21, 2020

Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus at Amherst College and the Founder/Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding. His most recent book is Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law. Volume II of his audio lectures from The Modern Scholar, First Principles and Natural Law is now available for download.

In times of contagion and war, unelected judges have been rightly timid about challenging the decisions made by figures in elective office, who bear a more direct responsibility to the people whose lives are in danger.  And so I began my last column as I noted that the issue of abortion could have a dramatic effect in disrupting that convention long settled in our law, as it has upended other parts of our law.

The recent decisions by governors, closing down vast parts of their economies, along with freedom of movement, have been sweeping well beyond any discriminations overly refined, or even mildly sensible.  These are not restrictions of liberty that Americans are likely to suffer for more than a few weeks without breaking into resistance.

And yet the main challenge so far has come on that issue of abortion.  Federal judges in Texas, Ohio, and Alabama issued restraining orders when the governors of those States thought it fitting not to exempt abortions clinics from the orders closing down other businesses. ….

Read more here:  https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/04/21/a-trump-judge-tips-the-balance-but-things-stay-the-same/