Downtown Volgograd in 1996 had very little in the way of charm. Essentially destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad a half century earlier, in the post-Stalinist era, an era of some slight optimism in the Soviet Union. The downtown had been rebuilt, but by Stalin, lacking imagination, money, or any real vision. Instead, it witnessed the construction of obligatory building after obligatory building, thrown together in the Soviet style.

Choice is at the center of our politics and of our economy. We think, in the economy, that consumers should have the right to choose, that buyers and sellers should also have that ability, that our selection or election or choosing ought to be our own, knowledgeable and uncoerced, and that it is a central role of the market to make that happen.

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.