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60  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

explained that to do so—to reverse prior law “upon a ground
no  firmer  than  a  change  in  [the  Court’s]  membership”—
would invite the view that “this institution is little different 
from the two political branches of the Government.”  Ibid. 
No  view,  Casey  thought,  could  do  “more  lasting  injury  to 
this Court and to the system of law which it is our abiding
mission  to  serve.”    Ibid.  For  overruling  Roe,  Casey  con-
cluded, the Court would pay a “terrible price.”  505 U. S., at 
864. 

The  Justices  who  wrote  those  words—O’Connor,  Ken-
nedy, and Souter—they were judges of wisdom.  They would
not have won any contests for the kind of ideological purity
some court watchers want Justices to deliver.  But if there 
were  awards  for  Justices  who  left  this  Court  better  than 
they  found  it?    And  who  for  that  reason  left  this  country 
better?  And the rule of law stronger?  Sign those Justices 
up.

They knew that “the legitimacy of the Court [is] earned
over time.”  Id., at 868.  They also would have recognized
that it can be destroyed much more quickly.  They worked 
hard to avert that outcome in Casey.  The American public,
they thought, should never conclude that its constitutional 
protections hung by a thread—that a new majority, adher-
ing to a new “doctrinal school,” could “by dint of numbers” 
alone expunge their rights.  Id., at 864.  It is hard—no, it is 
impossible—to  conclude  that  anything  else  has  happened 
here.  One of us once said that “[i]t is not often in the law 
that so few have so quickly changed so much.”  S. Breyer, 
Breaking  the  Promise  of  Brown:  The  Resegregation  of
America’s Schools 30 (2022).  For all of us, in our time on 
this Court, that has never been more true than today.  In 
overruling  Roe  and  Casey,  this  Court  betrays  its  guiding 
principles.

With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many mil-
lions of American women who have today lost a fundamen-
tal constitutional protection—we dissent.