Kavanaugh’s Unsettling Use of ‘Settled Law’
The Supreme Court nominee’s judicial record suggests he means only that <em>Roe v. Wade</em> hasn’t yet been overturned, not that it can’t be.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine reported that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, had assured her that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case affirming a woman’s constitutional right to choose abortion, was “settled law.” The implication was that Collins, who has indicated support for a right to choose, could vote for his confirmation without worrying about Roe or women’s reproductive rights.
Does it mean that? I haven’t been able to find a clear definition of the term, but in 1976, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “The Court seldom takes a case merely to reaffirm settled law.”
So maybe there’s a functional definition. “Settled law” means law the Court
