Supreme Court turns to history: How does past speak to the present?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : "The reasoning of the court in Dobbs is limited to substantive due process, and the reasoning of the court in Bruen is limited to the Second Amendment," says Professor Solum.
53% : His majority opinion, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, holds that the Second Amendment confers a right for law-abiding citizens to carry guns in public.
52% : The following Monday, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case concerning prayer in public schools - the high court announced a new test courts should apply when evaluating claims that behavior violates the Constitution's prohibition on the "establishment" of religion.
52% : The 1328 Statute of Northampton, for example - cited as an early example of restrictions on public carry - "has little bearing on the Second Amendment," he wrote.
49% : In the District of Columbia v. Heller, for example - the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling establishing an individual right to keep a handgun in the home - the historical analysis focused on what the Second Amendment meant at the time it was written.
47% : As the U.S. moves forward, its highest court seems preoccupied with looking backward, with a particular view of history underpinning key components of opinions expanding gun rights, erasing the right to abortion, and shifting how the boundary between church and state is guarded.
46% : The opinion discounts 18th and early 19th-century American laws permitting abortion before quickening (roughly 18 weeks of pregnancy), and ignores demands of 19th century abolitionists and suffragists for bodily autonomy.
42% : "Of course he's right about that, because at the time Roe was decided abortion was unlawful."
41% : In asserting that the right to abortion is not "deeply-rooted," Justice Alito devotes dozens of pages to the history of abortion jurisprudence, starting in 13th century England.
40% : The due process provision has been read to protect other rights not written in the Constitution - including the rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage.
39% : Justice Alito's opinion emphasized that because the right to abortion destroys "fetal life," it is "fundamentally different" from other substantive due process rights.
38% : "There are debates about some parts of the history, but [Justice Alito's] basic argument is, as of the date Roe was decided, there was no right to abortion that had deep roots in our history," says Lawrence Solum, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
36% : The bulk of the historical analysis focuses on the mid-19th century, when states started to criminalize abortion.
35% : And in 2015, when the court extended the right of marriage to same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges, both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito cited the ruling in their dissents.
28% : A decade later, Justice Alito - decidedly not joking about history or how to interpret the original meaning of the Constitution - wrote the opinion striking down the right to abortion.
23% : The central act of Justice Alito's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health was to eliminate a woman's right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two precedents holding that the 14th Amendment's right to due process guaranteed a right to abortion.

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