World Leaders Weigh In on American Law, So Justice Alito Reminds Them How Little They Truly Know
Who knows more about the Constitution than a Supreme Court justice? Well, everyone from French President Emmanuel Macron to Prince Harry, apparently.
Those are just two of the foreign leaders (if, of course, you consider the fatuous Prince Harry a leader of anything, including his own household) who decried the Supreme Court’s last month decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, is sick of it. In a speech last week, according to Reuters, he took aim at “a whole string of foreign leaders” who felt the need to interfere in American constitutional matters.
The unannounced speech — given to a University of Notre Dame Law School religious liberty conference held in Rome — was first reported on Thursday.
As Reuters noted, the speech marked Alito’s “first public remarks since the decision.”
During the speech, it reported, the justice “dismissed criticism of the ruling, which has come from the likes of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”
“I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law,” Alito said during his remarks.
“One of these was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price,” he quipped. (Johnson announced his plans to step down after a series of scandals involving the British prime minister flouting COVID lockdown regulations.)
However, Alito had special contempt for the opinions of a certain member of the British royal family.
“But what really wounded me — what really wounded me — was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said sarcastically.
In a speech given at the United Nations in New York just days before Alito’s remarks, Harry lamented the “rolling back of constitutional rights” — i.e., overturning Roe v. Wade and the invented constitutional right to abort an unborn child — to a “global assault on democracy and freedom,” which included Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
#BREAKING: At the United Nations, Prince Harry calls out “the rolling back of Constitutional rights in the United States” as part of “a global assault on democracy and freedom.” pic.twitter.com/RnJNmkPDcp
— Forbes (@Forbes) July 18, 2022
Other world leaders weren’t quite this dense — although getting a comment from someone denser than Harry would require interviewing a) a robot made entirely of lead and depleted uranium or b) Meghan Markle.
“Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. We must protect it. I would like to express my solidarity with all those women whose freedoms have today been compromised by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Macron wrote on Twitter.
Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected. I wish to express my solidarity with the women whose liberties are being undermined by the Supreme Court of the United States.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 24, 2022
According to Politico, Trudeau called the decision “horrific” and said his “heart goes out to the millions of American women who are now set to lose their legal right to an abortion. I can’t imagine the fear and anger you are feeling right now.”
Johnson, meanwhile, called it “a big step backwards.”
It’s amazing: All of these world leaders know more about our Constitution than five Supreme Court justices.
But notice that none of them made any remark about the Constitution itself — or what Alito’s ruling said.
Instead, these men are insisting that women should have the right to abort children in the United States. I doubt Macron is banging on about other countries where abortion is completely illegal or is only legal to save the life of the mother; there are plenty of those, according to World Population Review, and the United States isn’t one of them.
It’s also worth noting Macron wasn’t too eager to mention France bans abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy, as France24 notes. Meanwhile, the Dobbs case that ended up overturning Roe v. Wade had to do with a Mississippi law that was struck down by lower courts because it banned abortions — gasp! — after 15 weeks of gestation.
Macron’s own country wouldn’t have survived the legal precedent set under Roe — as, indeed, much of Europe and the rest of the world wouldn’t have.
Trudeau, meanwhile, wasn’t talking about a “horrific” constitutional precedent, just a “horrific” outcome when it comes to his worldview.
And when Johnson said this was “a big step backwards,” he wasn’t talking about a constitutional step backward. Instead, he believes abortion is sacrosanct, and no matter what our founding documents say or what our Supreme Court justices decide, we’re headed in reverse.
And then there’s Harry, comparing the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision noting that Roe invented a right to an abortion out of whole cloth and returning the issue to the states with … Russia’s sanguinary, irredentist, war crime-ridden invasion of Ukraine.
Harry might not be anywhere near the front of the line for the throne, thanks to Prince William blessedly preceding him out of his mother’s womb. That said, the Duke of Sussex, now just an empty shell of celebrity, seems to have transformed himself into nothing more than a walking proof of Thomas Paine’s epigram: “A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician.”
But I digress: None of these men is interested in Justice Alito’s opinion. None has likely read it. None of them is interested in the Constitution, although I’ll concede maybe a few of them have read it.
Instead, these are people who treat America as a sport and conservatism as the rival squad. (Johnson may be a Conservative, but that has a somewhat different meaning in Merrie England than it does in America.) Dobbs scored a point for the other team, and now they’re hopping mad.
American politicians don’t consider Canadian, English or French politics as if it were a sport. They typically don’t remark on those countries’ decisions and try to influence their laws, particularly pertaining to social policy.
Funny how so many other world leaders lack the decorum to return the favor.
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