Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said during remarks to the Heritage Foundation that the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision placed the lives of conservative justices in danger.
“The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority in support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us,” Alito said at the event.
Considering the white-hot rhetoric of hate dispensed by left-wing activists and others who call for overthrowing the court and applauding activists who threaten the families of judges, conservative justices have every right to be on alert. There won’t be another president for more than two years and some twisted radical might see a quick way to give Joe Biden a chance to flip the script on the right.
He said the idea was hardly fanciful, noting an attempt on the life of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. A California man armed with a pistol, a knife and other weapons was arrested in June near Justice Kavanaugh’s Maryland home and charged with attempted murder. Among other things, the man said he was upset with the leaked draft suggesting the court would overturn Roe, the police have said.
Alito also took issue with the notion that the court itself was illegitimate for overturning precedents like Roe v. Wade.
“Everybody in this country is free to disagree with our decisions,” he said. “Everybody is free to criticize our reasoning, and in strong terms. And that certainly is done in the media, in writings of law professors and on social media.”
“But to say the court is exhibiting lack of integrity is something quite different,” he said. “That goes to character.”
Indeed, it’s a base smear lacking any evidence that the justices who voted to overturn Roe were acting without integrity and this somehow makes their decisions illegitimate.
“Someone also crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate. I don’t think that anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly. That is not just ordinary criticism. That is something very different,” Alito added.
Related: Chief Justice Roberts Responds to Democrat Attacks on Court’s Legitimacy
I don’t think enough attention was paid to the extraordinarily dangerous atmosphere that coalesced around the leaked draft opinion on abortion last summer. Democrats did not take threats to the families of justices seriously, intimating that they were a normal part of Democratic protest and any effort to protect the justices and their families were tantamount to suppressing free speech.
Did some Democrats hope that one or two justices would be assassinated in order to give the left a chance to flip the court?
In this day and age, anything and everything is possible. And Democrats who dismiss Alito’s claims either don’t care or don’t believe such a thing is possible.
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