What do we know about Chief Justice Roberts judicial philosophy and his legal views of abortion?
Lyle Denniston: No one can say with certainty how the chief justice will react to cases involving restrictions on abortions. He has acknowledged that there is a constitutional right to privacy, and he has embraced one of the foundation precedents of Roe v. Wade — the 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. If presented with a clear-cut case, challenging Roe directly, it is my guess that he would not support its overruling. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Court would not even get to the validity of the Roe decision until it first decided whether Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) was a precedent deserving respect. What he calls his judicial modesty suggests to me that he does not want to start undoing precedents around which many people have arranged their lives. Jack Balkin: Roberts refused to state at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings whether he would vote to overrule Roe; in his confirmation hearings for a position on the D.C. Circuit he stated that he regarded
