This page is a portfolio adaptation of the work described below. A link to the original appears where it is publicly available.

Overview

This constitutional-law paper examines Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization through the legal doctrines and competing interpretive frameworks that shaped the Court’s decision.

The project traces the dispute from Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act through federal litigation and Supreme Court review, then focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment, substantive due process, the treatment of unenumerated rights, and the role of precedent in constitutional adjudication.

How did the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Dobbs change the constitutional framework that had governed abortion rights under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey?

The paper approaches that question by separating the legal issue from the broader political debate and examining how the majority, concurring opinions, and dissent framed constitutional liberty and judicial authority differently.

Constitutional framework

A central part of the analysis is the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the doctrine of substantive due process.

The paper reviews how earlier cases had connected constitutional liberty and privacy to decisions involving pregnancy, then examines how the Dobbs majority rejected the proposition that abortion was a fundamental liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.

This makes the case a useful vehicle for examining a broader constitutional question: how courts identify and protect rights that are not expressly enumerated in the constitutional text.

Competing judicial approaches

The paper distinguishes several strands of reasoning in the decision:

  • the majority’s emphasis on constitutional text, history, and tradition;
  • its criticism of the doctrinal foundations and administrability of Roe and Casey;
  • Chief Justice Roberts’s separate position on the scope of the Court’s ruling;
  • the dissent’s emphasis on liberty, autonomy, equality, and the institutional value of precedent.

Presenting those approaches side by side allows the project to focus on how constitutional interpretation operates when the Justices disagree not only about the result, but about the method used to determine protected liberty.

Stare decisis and institutional legitimacy

The reversal of Roe and Casey makes stare decisis a second major analytical theme.

The paper considers the competing arguments over when adherence to precedent promotes stability and legitimacy and when the Court may conclude that a precedent should be overruled. That tension places Dobbs within a larger constitutional debate about the relationship between judicial interpretation, institutional continuity, and democratic policymaking.

Why this work matters

This project demonstrates legal research and constitutional analysis rather than policy advocacy alone. It requires identifying the legal question, reconstructing precedent, distinguishing majority and dissenting reasoning, and connecting doctrinal arguments to the institutional role of the Supreme Court.

For the portfolio, it adds a dedicated constitutional-law and judicial-analysis sample alongside work focused on public administration, policy implementation, and comparative governance.

Portfolio context

Completed for LSTD 301 – Constitutional Law at American Military University in June 2025.