Harvard Law & Policy Review

Archives for August 2020

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Why Whole Woman’s Health’s Balancing Test Still Applies After June Medical

By David S. Cohen*   What’s the test in lower court cases challenging abortion restrictions? Is it the burdens versus benefits balancing test from Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt? Or is it the substantial obstacle test, with no balancing, from Chief Justice Roberts’ concurring opinion in June Medical v. Russo? This is the burning question in the post-June Medical world. Answering it takes us into the world of pornography, voting paradoxes, horizontal versus vertical stare decisis, …

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Abortion After June Medical

By Mary Ziegler* The Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo was more than a little ironic. Chief Justice Roberts’s controlling concurrence read as a celebration of stare decisis, the principle that the Court should usually defer to its past decisions. And yet Roberts upended precedent. If Roberts’s concurrence becomes the standard for testing the constitutionality of abortion regulations, the courts will not have to consider whether abortion restrictions have any benefit …

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Winning by Losing: Chief Justice Roberts’s Strategy to Eviscerate Reproductive Rights and Justice

By Maya Manian* In June Medical Services v. Russo, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that would have shuttered all but one abortion clinic in the state. Unfortunately, that decision came at a steep cost: Chief Justice Roberts wrote a separate opinion in June Medical weakening the legal standard for protecting abortion access and setting forth a road map for how states can attack abortion rights going forward. Furthermore, in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, Roberts …

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HLPR Student Note Competition Open

**The deadline for submissions has been extended to Friday, August 21** The Harvard Law & Policy Review's Winter 2020 Student Note Competition is now open. The competition provides a unique opportunity for law students to publish their work in HLPR, which has had a recent distribution to more than 6,000 lawyers nationwide, as well as congressional offices, judges, and other progressive decision-makers. We seek policy-oriented pieces that are 4,000–13,000 words, shorter in length than a …

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Scientific and Medical Expertise in the Prosecution of Pregnant Women

By Aziza Ahmed* Among the many important critiques made by reproductive justice (RJ) advocates, a key claim is that “choice” is a myth for poor women seeking reproductive health services. According to RJ advocates and scholars, a combination of laws and social realities—from welfare restrictions to discrimination in the hospital setting—have made it nearly impossible for poor pregnant women to have autonomy and agency in their health-related decision making. Some scholars have argued that the …

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