On the Consummate Statecraft of Samuel Alito, by Hadley Arkes

By Hadley Arkes, The Catholic Thing, May 4, 2022

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. …

I have to confess that when the news broke last night and I read that careful, exhaustive, impressive opinion from Justice Alito, my eye moved to those key points for which I was looking. And there I fell into a mild despair. For the Justice preserved, as one of the defining strands of his opinion, that the human standing of the child in the womb would be left as a matter merely of belief.  And as one justice put it a while back, the people in the States may simply be invited to mull over their “value judgment” on when that child in the womb becomes human – and how much they would “value” the protection of that child.

But it became clearer to me last night that any disappointment of mine should be overborne by the vast good that Samuel Alito accomplishes here. I think that the Straussian reading here would be the right one, and that is how it will be read by the opposition.   …

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