When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush in 2000’s landmark Bush v. Gore decision, effectively handing the presidency to the Republican, it was widely seen as a nakedly partisan, ad hoc undertaking meant to install a conservative kindred spirit.
Twenty-two years later, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, “Hold my beer. No, not the one in the Solo cup. The one on the bar that looks like a crew team’s communal footbath. I like beer.” And just like that, nearly 50 years of settled precedent went up in a cloud of liturgical incense and Axe body spray.
That decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was seismic, marking a rare occasion when the Supreme Court explicitly sought to strip away a right—in this case, the right to abortion—that Americans had relied on for decades.
