Late Wednesday night, Tennessee GOP senator Marsha Blackburn asked Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about the Dobbs case challenging the Roe and Casey precedents that declared a constitutional right to abortion.
“Do you commit to respecting the Court’s decision if it rules that Roe was wrongly decided and that the issue of abortion should be sent back to the states?” Blackburn asked.
Sen. Blackburn: "Do you commit to respecting the Court's decision if it rules that Roe was wrongly decided and that the issue of abortion should be sent back to the states?
Judge Jackson: "Whatever the Supreme Court decides in Dobbs will be the precedent of the Supreme Court…" pic.twitter.com/chzWeyVnUY
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 23, 2022
“Whatever the Supreme Court decides in Dobbs will be the precedent of the Supreme Court. It will be worthy of respect in the sense that it is the precedent. I commit to treating it as I would any other precedent,” Jackson replied.
Jackson’s response doesn’t tell us much—every decision is precedent worthy of respect until the Court has the case and the votes to overturn it. But “worthy of respect” is not a message that’s helpful to advocates of a constitutional right to abortion a couple months before the Court issues its ruling in Dobbs.