Roberts Done Deal, Dworkin Makes Predications

It's Ronald Dworkin's turn to put "Judge Roberts on Trial". Dworkin predicts that Roberts will uphold Roe because to do otherwise would be detrimental to the Republican Party.

Overruling Roe would suddenly make abortion again an urgent national political issue for many millions of women who have come to take for granted the right that women have enjoyed for two generations and who now vote to express their views on other issues, often for Republicans. Overruling Roe would not be helpful to the national Republican Party.

Of far greater concern for Dworkin is where the future Chief Justice will stand on war powers:

The danger is greater, in my view, that Roberts will join with the other conservative justices in extending the President's power to conduct his war against terrorism without regard for either international law or the traditional rights of prisoners. During the hearings he insisted that the Bill of Rights remains in full force during a war, and he seemed to reject Chief Justice Rehnquist's famous comment that though the laws are not silent in times of war they speak in a quieter voice. Yet he emphasized the president's powers as commander in chief and suggested, when Senator Patrick Leahy asked him whether the president had the power to order the torture of prisoners, that that depended on whether Congress was "supportive" of the president's action.