Author: Joel Levin

When we set out to assess the American judicial system, we typically do it piecemeal, decision by decision, aiming our focus first at individual judges, then courts, then the role of judges in our system generally.

This past week, in Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health, the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally changed the law of abortion in the United States. The case involved a Mississippi statute that, essentially, prevented almost all abortions after 15 weeks.

The January 6 Committee hearings bring upon those concerned and horrified by the Capitol insurrection a certain malaise, a deep and foreboding anxiety, a feeling that all of this is for naught.

We should take it as a mark of reasonable judgment not to consider the moderately problematic the same as the extremely problematic, to be unsurprised when anticipated action comport with expected results, and not to shift standards in similar situations without extremely good reasons.