The stakes on what the new conservative majority might do to existing law and precedent got immeasurably higher over the weekend. In the middle of the very strange We Are Not Hacks Over America Tour that has featured both Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Clarence Thomas protesting far too much about what a clear and objective institution the Supreme Court is, an amicus brief in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization landed in the news with a deafening thud, and with an impact that blew away a giant sequoia of conservative fig leafs that had been accumulating for four decades.
