Is Dobbs the First Case to Take Rights Away from Americans?
by Alan M. Dershowitz • July 1, 2022 at 5:00 am
Tribe's blanket statement that never in history have Americans gone to bed with fewer rights than when they woke up is not only wrong historically and constitutionally, but also extremely insensitive to African Americans, Native Americans, the mentally ill, Japanese Americans and other marginalized groups that have been denied the most basic rights over the years.
The truth, which Tribe denies in the interest of his partisan narrative, is that the pendulum of rights has swung widely throughout our history. Even if Martin Luther King Jr. was correct when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," that arc has not always pointed in the direction of rights -- or justice. In a democracy with a complex system of separation of powers, checks and balances and federalism, there will always be some back and forth with regard to rights.
Tribe seems to take for granted that his preferred rights are an ever-expanding given.
Falsehoods will not set us free. Only hard work, based on truth, will push the arc toward justice.
Whatever one may think of Dobbs v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade, some critics have overstated its uniqueness in taking from Americans their preexisting rights. Professor Laurence Tribe badly misinformed his readers when he said the following:
"Friday was a singular day in our history: the first day in living memory that Americans went to bed with fewer inalienable rights than they had when they woke up. Not just in living memory. Ever."
Tragically, there have been dozens of cases throughout our history in which Americans had their most fundamental rights taken away.
