Courting the Court: Understanding the Power of the Supreme Court Through the History of Abortion
Major
Political Science
Second Major
History
Submission Type
Oral Presentation
Area of Study or Work
History, Political Science
Faculty Advisor
Jim Simeone
Location
CNS E104
Start Date
4-12-2025 8:30 AM
End Date
4-12-2025 9:30 AM
Abstract
This research analyzes the intellectual history of some of the key theories describing the Supreme Court’s interaction with politics, realignment, and government to answer how best to describe the Supreme Court’s role in the debate around abortion. What do the Supreme Court’s actions in the cases of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and interactions with the rest of the government say about the ways in which we should view how it functions and its role in politics? To answer this question, this research analyzes the historical perspectives of three scholars of the Supreme Court: Robert Dahl, David Adamany, and William Lasser, on how the Supreme Court behaves and interacts with the rest of the government and compares it to the history of how the government and Supreme Court acted during the three abortion cases. In doing so I find that the perspectives of Dahl and Adamany have the views most in line with the behavior of the Supreme Court with regards to the abortion debate. These perspectives show the Supreme Court as heavily influenced by dominant elite intellectuals of the times and it serves a key role in the formation of new governing coalitions and in putting key issues into the public consciousness.
Courting the Court: Understanding the Power of the Supreme Court Through the History of Abortion
CNS E104
This research analyzes the intellectual history of some of the key theories describing the Supreme Court’s interaction with politics, realignment, and government to answer how best to describe the Supreme Court’s role in the debate around abortion. What do the Supreme Court’s actions in the cases of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and interactions with the rest of the government say about the ways in which we should view how it functions and its role in politics? To answer this question, this research analyzes the historical perspectives of three scholars of the Supreme Court: Robert Dahl, David Adamany, and William Lasser, on how the Supreme Court behaves and interacts with the rest of the government and compares it to the history of how the government and Supreme Court acted during the three abortion cases. In doing so I find that the perspectives of Dahl and Adamany have the views most in line with the behavior of the Supreme Court with regards to the abortion debate. These perspectives show the Supreme Court as heavily influenced by dominant elite intellectuals of the times and it serves a key role in the formation of new governing coalitions and in putting key issues into the public consciousness.