保守派法律运动的命运

The conservative legal movement finds itself at its most precarious point since its inception in the early 1970s. That might sound implausible. The last four years saw the appointment of three Supreme Court justices, dozens of appellate judges, and nearly 200 district court judges—almost all coming from within the ranks of the conservative legal movement. Conservatives on the Supreme Court now (ostensibly) hold a 6–3 majority, making it, in all likelihood, the most conservative Court we will see in our lifetimes. It would thus be easy to conclude that the conservative legal movement is at its apogee.

始于 1970 年代初的保守派法律运动正处于岌岌可危的时刻。这听起来可能难以置信，过去四年里任命的三名最高法院大法官、数十名上诉法院法官，以及近 200 名地区法院法官，几乎都来自保守派法律运动的队伍中，如今，保守派在最高法院（表面上）占据了 6-3 的多数，很可能，这将是我们有生之年看到最保守的最高法院。故而，我们很容易做出这样的判断：保守派法律运动正处于其顶峰。

But it is precisely the movement’s success that puts it in peril. After decades of laying intellectual groundwork, building institutions, and engaging in politics, legal conservatives are in a position to accomplish what they see as the revival of the rule of law. But with that success has come high expectations that the Supreme Court will deliver on the legal goals that have sustained the movement through many disappointments and false starts. Foremost of those goals: overruling Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion; and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed Roe’s “central holding.” More than any other Supreme Court decision, Roe is responsible for the emergence of the conservative legal movement. If there were only one reason that the movement has endured for decades, it would be to see Roe overturned.

但恰恰是该运动的成功，让它如今陷入险境。几十年来铺就的智识基础，建立的机构，以及政治参与，令法律保守派如今有能力实现他们眼中的法治的复兴。不过，伴随这一成功的，是人们对最高法院实现其法律目标寄予的厚望，正是这些目标，在许多失望与失败尝试中，一直维系着该运动。这其中最重要的目标：推翻罗诉韦德案，1973 年的这一判决确立了堕胎权由宪法所保障；以及计划生育组织诉凯西案，1992 年的这一判决重申了罗诉韦德案「核心要旨」（central holding）的判决。相比其他任何最高法院判决，罗诉韦德案对保守派法律运动的诞生负有更多责任，如果只有一个原因使该运动持续数十年，那就是看到罗诉韦德案被推翻。

These will be the stakes when the Supreme Court decides Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi’s prohibition on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy—next summer. As December 1’s Supreme Court oral argument highlighted, Mississippi and its supporting amici have expressly asked the Court to overrule Roe and Casey, and Dobbs squarely presents that issue because, as Jackson Women’s Health Organization asserted in its briefing and at oral argument, Mississippi’s ban “directly contravenes [Roe’s] ‘central holding’ and cannot stand” if Roe remains good law.

明年夏天，当最高法院对多布斯诉杰克逊妇女健康组织案，针对密西西比州禁止怀孕 15 周后堕胎的合宪性的诉讼作出判决时，这些将是利害攸关的。正如 12 月 1 日最高法院口头辩论强调的那样，密西西比州及其法庭之友，明确要求法院推翻罗诉韦德案与凯西案，而多布斯案不偏不倚直指该法律争议点，因为，正如杰克逊妇女健康组织在其陈述和口头辩论中所主张的，如果罗诉韦德案仍然是有效法律（good law），则密西西比州的禁令 「直接违背了[罗诉韦德案]的『核心要旨』，无法成立。」

This, then, is the moment the conservative legal movement has fought to bring about. If the Court fails to overrule Roe, the ruling will likely shatter the movement, and while (under a proper conception of the judicial role) the potential effect of Dobbs on the conservative legal movement should be irrelevant to the outcome in that case, it would be a significant legacy of the Roberts Court if Dobbs brought an end to one of the most successful intellectual and political projects of the past half-century.

那么，这就是保守派法律运动一直争取的时刻。如果法院未能推翻罗诉韦德案，这次裁决可能会粉碎该运动。尽管（根据对司法职责的正确理会），多布斯案对保守派法律运动的潜在影响不应与该案的结果有关，但如果多布斯案使过去半个世纪最成功的一个智识与政治项目终结，这将是罗伯茨法院的一份重要遗产。

That demise would result not only from dashed expectations but also from intellectual tensions within the conservative legal movement—present since its inception and now coming to the fore. The Dobbs decision will likely either increase those tensions to the point of rupture or greatly alleviate them. Next summer will be a defining moment in the battle for the Constitution.

保守派法律运动可能因此终结，原因不只是期望的落空，还有保守派法律运动内部自诞生就存在，而今开始凸显的智识上的张力。多布斯案的判决可能加剧这些张力，至足以使其破裂的程度，或令其大大缓解。明年夏天将是这场宪法之争的一个决定性时刻。

What we now know as the conservative legal movement was born in the aftermath of the Warren Court, the period from 1953 through 1969, when Earl Warren served as chief justice. It was a time of tremendous upheaval in American constitutional law. To take just a few examples, the Court required states to provide indigent criminal defendants with a lawyer, mandated the principle of one-person-one-vote in redistricting, declared a right to use contraception, and required the reading of so-called Miranda Rights to those taken into police custody. All these (and many other) decisions were controversial, and all represented dramatic departures from well-established constitutional law. A revolution in so many areas of law and social life was bound to provoke a counterrevolution in law and politics, and it did.

我们如今所知的保守派法律运动诞生于沃伦法院（Warren Court）之后。1953 年到 1969 年厄尔·沃伦（Earl Warren）担任首席大法官的那一时期，美国宪法经历了巨大动荡 。仅举几例，法院要求各州为贫困的刑事被告提供律师、规定了重划选区一人一票的原则、宣示了使用避孕措施的权利，以及要求警方在拘留嫌疑人时，向其宣读所谓的米兰达权利。所有这些（以及许多其他）判决都是具争议的，都体现了对既成宪法的巨大偏离。这场涉及法律和社会生活诸多领域的革命，必然会激起法律和政治方面的反革命，事实也如此。

The legal counterrevolution began when then–Yale law professor Robert Bork published an article that began laying the intellectual foundation for the conservative legal movement. “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems” argued that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy rests on its ability to derive principles neutrally from the text and history of the Constitution, define those principles in a neutral manner, and apply them impartially across cases. To the extent the justices instead derive principles from their own viscera, define them arbitrarily, or apply them inconsistently, Bork wrote, they “claim for the Supreme Court an institutionalized role as perpetrator of limited coups d’etat.”

开启这场法律反革命的是时任耶鲁大学法律教授罗伯特·博克（Robert Bork）发表的一篇文章，《中立原则和第一修正案的一些问题》，这篇为保守派法律运动奠定智识基础的文章认为，最高法院的合法性取决于其能否从宪法文本和历史中立地推导出原则，以中立态度定义这些原则，并将其公正地应用于各个案件。博克写道，如果大法官们凭自己内心推导原则，任意定义，或不一致地应用这些原则，他们就「要求最高法院从约定俗成的角色变为一个有限政变的肇事者。」

Bork cited as a prime instance of this illegitimate decision-making the Court’s opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case holding that married couples have a constitutional right to use contraception (a right that the Court extended to unmarried individuals in the 1972 case of Eisenstadt v. Baird). Griswold famously (or, to most legal conservatives, infamously) based its holding on the notion that, while no specific provision of the Constitution clearly established the right to use contraception, “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” To Bork, this was emblematic of the lawlessness of the Warren Court.

博克列举了法院在格里斯沃尔德诉康涅狄格州一案中的意见，作为这种不合法判决制定的首要例子，1965 年的该起案例支持已婚夫妇拥有使用避孕手段的宪法权利（法院在 1972 年的艾森斯塔特诉贝尔德案中将此权利扩大至未婚人士）。 格里斯沃尔德案是著名的（或者，对大多数法律保守派来说，是臭名昭著的），其判决要旨基于这样一个观点：尽管宪法中没有具体条款明确使用避孕手段的权利，但「《权利法案》中的具体保障有其晕影（penumbras），由那些帮助赋予它们生命和实质的保障发散而来。」 在博克看来，这是沃伦法院无法无天的象征。

From 1953 to 1969, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren presided over a tremendous upheaval in American constitutional law; the conservative legal movement was born in its aftermath. 从1953年到1969年，美国宪法在最高法院首席大法官厄尔·沃伦任内经历了一次剧变，此后便诞生了保守主义法律运动。

Bork thus began charting an alternative theory of constitutional adjudication based on neutral principles derived from the text and history of the Constitution. It was a path that would lead to the development of originalism, the theory that constitutional provisions must be interpreted and applied in accordance with the meaning they had when they were ratified. Subsequent works by Justice William Rehnquist and Harvard law professor Raoul Berger furthered originalism’s development, and by 1980, it had become a recognized rival to the brand of progressive constitutional jurisprudence embodied by the Warren Court.

因而，博克开始制定另一种，基于从宪法文本和历史得出的中立原则的宪法裁判理论，这条道路导致了原旨主义（originalism）的发展。原旨主义认为，宪法条款的解释与适用必须依照它们被批准时的含义。威廉·伦奎斯特大法官（Justice William Rehnquist）以及哈佛大学法学教授劳尔·伯杰（Raoul Berger）的后续作品进一步推动了原旨主义的发展，到 1980 年，它已成为沃伦法院所体现的进步主义宪法学的公认对手。

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 proved decisive to originalism’s ascendancy, ushering in a wave of judicial appointments (including of Bork to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) and the elevation of committed originalists to senior positions in the Department of Justice. The appointment of Justice Rehnquist as chief justice and of Antonin Scalia as an associate justice, along with several high-profile speeches defending originalism delivered by Attorney General Edwin Meese in Reagan’s second term, made it clear that originalism was here to stay. It had become the default theory of constitutional adjudication for a new coalition that formed the conservative legal movement.

1980 年罗纳德·里根的当选，对原旨主义的崛起具有决定性意义，它带来的一波司法任命（包括博克进入美国华盛顿特区巡回上诉法院），并将坚定的原旨主义者提拔至司法部的要职。伦奎斯特大法官被任命为首席大法官，安东宁·斯卡利亚（Antonin Scalia）被任命为大法官，加之司法部长埃德温·米斯（Edwin Meese）在里根第二任期内几次发表高调捍卫原旨主义的演讲，都表明了原旨主义将继续存在。它已然成为形成保守派法律运动的新联盟的默认宪法裁判理论。

But from the beginning, two major sources of tension beset the movement: a division among originalists and a division between originalists and conservative non-originalists.

但从一开始，就有两股张力困扰着这一运动：原旨主义者之间的分歧，以及，原旨主义者与保守非原旨主义者之间的分歧。

The first, intra-originalist tension was between those who saw originalism as a means to achieving some other substantive end and those for whom it was the only legitimate constitutional methodology. Those holding the instrumentalist view hoped that originalism would achieve various ends but were usually most concerned with shrinking the federal judiciary’s role in American life after the Warren Court’s aggressive intrusion into the political and social realms. They advocated originalism as a way of achieving “judicial restraint,” by which they often meant that the judiciary should generally allow the democratic process to settle controversial political and social questions.

第一股，视原旨主义为手段，实现其他实质性目的的人，与视其为唯一合法宪法方法论的人之间的张力。持工具主义观的人希望原旨主义能够实现各种目的，但通常，他们最关切的，是在沃伦法院积极干预政治和社会领域之后，收缩联邦司法机关在美国生活中的角色。他们主张将原旨主义作为实现「司法克制」（judicial restraint）的一种方法，这常常意味着，他们认为司法机关一般应允许民主程序解决具争议的政治和社会问题。

Harvard law professor James Bradley Thayer had articulated this principle in an 1893 lecture, “The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law.” The Supreme Court, Thayer argued, should hold a political act unconstitutional only “when those who have the right to make laws have not merely made a mistake, but have made a very clear one—so clear that it is not open to rational question.” Progressive constitutional theorists took up Thayer’s argument in the early twentieth century as a way of criticizing Supreme Court decisions holding many early progressive and New Deal initiatives unconstitutional. But things took a turn during the Warren Court as the judiciary began assertively intervening in state and federal social policy, leading the New Dealer justice Hugo Black to lament, in his Griswold dissent, that the progressive Warren Court had betrayed the judicial-restraint principles of the progressive New Deal Court.

哈佛大学法学教授詹姆斯·布拉德利·塞耶（James Bradley Thayer）在其 1893 年演讲《美国宪法学说的起源和范围》中阐述过这一原则。塞耶认为，只有在「那些有权制定法律的人不仅犯了错误，且是非常明显的错误，以至于无法对其提出合理质疑时，最高法院才应认定一项政治行为违宪」。进步主义宪法理论家在二十世纪初采纳了塞耶的论证，以此批判最高法院认定许多早期进步主义和新政举措违宪的判决。但情况在沃伦法院期间发生逆转，司法机关开始坚定地干预州以及联邦的社会政策，这导致拥护新政的大法官雨果·布莱克（Hugo Black）在格里斯沃尔德案不同意见书中哀叹，进步主义的沃伦法院背叛了进步主义新政法院的司法克制原则。

As Princeton professor Keith Whittington has observed, Black’s accusation of the Warren Court’s hypocrisy in Griswold became a standard attack by early legal conservatives. Bork made the point explicitly in his 1971 article, as did Rehnquist in an important 1976 lecture. Early legal conservatism, then, had a strong commitment to judicial restraint, and it saw originalism as a way of reining in an out-of-control judiciary. An important implication of this view was that, to the extent that originalism did not restrain the judiciary, it should be abandoned as having failed to serve its purpose. The instrumentalist commitment to originalism was contingent, not based on deep principle.

正如普林斯顿大学教授凯斯·惠廷顿（Keith Whittington）观察到的，布莱克在格里斯沃尔德案中对沃伦法院之虚伪的指责，成了早期法律保守派的标准攻击。博克在其 1971 年的文章中明确指出了这一点，伦奎斯特在其重要的 1976 年演讲中亦然。因此，早期法律保守主义对司法克制有着坚定承诺，视原旨主义为约束失控的司法机关的一种方法。该观点的一个重要含义是，只要原旨主义没能约束司法机关，达不到其目的，它就应该被抛弃。工具主义者对原旨主义的承诺是看情况的，而非基于深刻的原则。

Unlike the instrumentalists, other legal conservatives saw originalism as logically entailed by the Constitution and the principles on which it rested. This theme, too, can be found in Bork’s 1971 article. Bork argued that the basic principle of our system is that the majority rules. But the majority established limits on its own power through the Constitution, and this placed the judiciary in the position of having to determine, through constitutional interpretation, when the majority had done so. If the Court wrongly held that the Constitution limited majority power when it did not, this abetted tyranny of the minority; if the Court held that the Constitution did not limit majority power when it actually did, this abetted tyranny of the majority.

与工具主义者不同，其他法律保守派认为，原旨主义是从宪法和宪法所依据的原则，经逻辑推导而来的，这一主题也可以在博克 1971 年的文章中发现。博克认为，我们制度的基本原则是多数人统治，但多数人通过宪法确立了对其自身权力的限制，这就要求司法机关必须通过宪法解释来确定多数人何时做到了这样。如果法院错误地认定宪法限制了多数人的权力，而实际没有做到，这就助长了少数人的暴政；如果法院认定宪法没能限制多数人的权力，但实际上做到了，这就助长了多数人的暴政。

Bork called this the Madisonian dilemma, and the only way for the Court legitimately to draw the line between majority and minority power, he maintained, was to interpret the Constitution in line with neutral principles, and that could be achieved only by deriving, defining, and applying those principles based on the text and history of the Constitution—that is, through originalism. Originalism, for Bork, was the only plausible methodology of constitutional adjudication because it was logically required for the legitimacy of judicial review and, by extension, for the Constitution. This commitment to originalism was not contingent.

博克称之为麦迪逊两难（Madisonian dilemma），他坚持，法院划定多数人和少数人之间权力界限的唯一合法办法，是依照中立原则解释宪法，为实现这点，只能从宪法文本和历史推导、定义和应用这些原则，也就是通过原旨主义。对博克来说，原旨主义是唯一合理的宪法裁判方法论，因为在逻辑上，它是司法审查的合法性，乃至宪法的合法性所需要的。这种对原旨主义的承诺并非是看情况的。

Over the next several decades, as scholars and jurists (such as Justice Scalia) helped refine the theoretical basis of originalism, the non-instrumentalist view became dominant within conservative intellectual circles, and the judicial-restraint view subsided, though it remained a significant minority position and continues to play an outsize role in conservative political discourse about the Court. Most legal conservatives came to believe that originalism was the only legitimate constitutional methodology and that the Court should enforce the Constitution’s original meaning, regardless of how much or how little intrusion was required.

之后几十年里，随着学者和法学家（如斯卡利亚大法官）帮助完善了原旨主义的理论基础，非工具主义看法在保守派知识界中成为主流，司法克制看法消退了，但它仍然是一个重要的少数立场，并继续在保守派关于法院的政治讨论中发挥着巨大作用。大多数法律保守派进而认为，原旨主义是唯一合法的宪法方法论，并且法院应该践行宪法的原意，不管那需要更多还是更少干涉。

That explains why, for instance, Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito were prepared to throw out the entire Affordable Care Act, in what would have been the most important repudiation of the political branches since the New Deal; by contrast, Chief Justice John Roberts—the Court’s most committed Thayerian (though never a committed originalist)—was unwilling to do so. While the tension between instrumentalists and non-instrumentalists might, at first glance, appear to be merely a matter of intellectual history, it has had enormous real-world consequences.

举例而言，这就解释了为什么，斯卡利亚、克拉伦斯·托马斯（Clarence Thomas）和塞缪尔·阿利托（Samuel Alito）大法官愿意整个推翻《平价医疗法案》，这本会成为自新政以来[最高法院]对政治分支最重要的否定；相反，首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨——法院最坚定的塞耶主义者（尽管从来不是坚定的原旨主义者），不愿这样做。尽管乍看之下，工具主义者和非工具主义者之间的张力或许只不过一个思想史问题，但它在现实世界有巨大影响。

The second tension is equally significant. From the beginning, legal conservatives have disagreed about whether originalism rests on a sufficiently robust moral foundation. All constitutional theories, including originalism, ultimately require a moral argument for why we should obey the Constitution. Even if a judge believes, based on some ostensibly morally neutral reason, that the only way to interpret a historical document like the Constitution faithfully is according to its original meaning, that does not show that the judge should care about faithfully interpreting the Constitution.

第二种张力同样不可小觑。从一开始，法律保守派就对原旨主义是否建立在足够坚实的道德基础上存在分歧。所有宪法理论，包括原旨主义，最终都需要一个道德论证，以说明我们为什么该遵从宪法。即便一名法官基于一些表面看来道德中立的理由，认为忠实地解释宪法这样的历史文件的唯一办法是根据其原意，也无法说明法官为何要在意是否忠实解释宪法。

If we are not bound by the Constitution, the judge would be free to ignore a faithful interpretation and proceed to rewrite the Constitution instead. To explain why this would be wrong, one would need to show that the judge has an obligation to obey the Constitution as written. Moreover, the moral stance shapes how we interpret the Constitution because this tells us the purpose of interpreting it. If, for example, a judge believes (as many progressive constitutional theorists do) that the only way that the Constitution can have morally binding force is if its meaning can be revised without a formal constitutional amendment, that moral justification would require rejecting originalism and embracing a theory that allowed judges to change the document’s meaning over time.

假如我们不受宪法的约束，法官大可以无视忠实解释并着手重写宪法。为解释这样做为什么是错误的，我们需要证明法官有义务遵从宪法原文。此外，道德立场决定了我们如何解释宪法，因为它告诉我们解释宪法的目的。譬如，如果法官认为（正如许多进步派宪法理论家所认为的），宪法只有当其含义可以在没有正式宪法修正案的情况下被修改的时才具有道德约束力，这种道德论证就需要拒绝原旨主义，并接受一种允许法官随时间推移改变文件含义的理论。

Since originalism, like any other constitutional theory, ultimately rests on a moral argument, it can be challenged by those who find that argument insufficient. As former Amherst professor Hadley Arkes wrote in First Things recently (addressing both originalism and its statutory counterpart, textualism), because originalism is “deeply reluctant to make [the] move beyond ‘tradition’ and [the text] to the moral truth of the matter,” it “indeed has nothing to say on matters of real consequence. It is a morally empty jurisprudence.”

由于原旨主义，像其他宪法理论一样，最终建立在一个道德论证上，它可能被那些认为该论证不充分的人挑战。正如前阿默斯特大学教授哈德利·阿克斯（Hadley Arkes）近来在《第一件事》（既谈到了原旨主义，也谈到了与之相似的文本主义）中所写的，因为原旨主义「极不愿意走出『传统』和[文本]，进入事情的道德真相」，它「在有实际影响的问题上实在无话可说。这是一种道德上空洞的法学。」

More recently, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule has become the leading critic of originalism from the right by contending that originalism is morally bankrupt. Vermeule’s views are complex, but what he has written thus far attacks originalism from the perspective of the natural-law tradition, in which the moral legitimacy of the Constitution (as a form of positive law) depends on its accordance with the natural law. As nothing in originalism requires it to accord with the natural law, Vermeule argues, no morally compelling argument favors it.

最近，哈佛大学法学教授阿德里安·维米尔（Adrian Vermeule）成了右翼阵营中原旨主义的主要批评者，他认为原旨主义道德上是破产的。维米尔的观点很复杂，但目前来看，他的文章是从自然法传统的角度攻击原旨主义，其中宪法（作为成文法的一种）的道德合法性取决于其是否符合自然法。维米尔认为，由于原旨主义中没有任何内容要求它符合自然法，也就没有任何道德上令人信服的论据支持它。

The moral critique of originalism came to the fore in the summer of 2020 when the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status. The case involved statutory interpretation (textualism), not constitutional interpretation (originalism). But the justifications for, and methodologies of, textualism and originalism overlap significantly, which is why moral critics of originalism often use the term interchangeably with textualism. Arkes, for instance, argued that the Bostock opinion, written by the originalist and textualist Justice Neil Gorsuch, proved that originalism lacks a sufficiently compelling moral account.

2020 年夏天，当最高法院对波斯托克诉佐治亚克莱顿县案作出判决时，对原旨主义的道德批判开始涌现。该案主张 1964 年《民权法案》第七章，禁止基于性取向或跨性别身份的歧视，其中涉及到的是法律解释（文本主义），而不是宪法解释（原旨主义）。不过，文本主义和原旨主义在证明和方法论上都有很大重叠，这也是为什么，原旨主义道德的批评者经常将该词与文本主义混用。譬如，阿克斯认为，由原旨主义与文本主义大法官尼尔·戈萨奇（Neil Gorsuch）撰写的波斯托克案意见书，证明了原旨主义缺乏足够令人信服的道德解释。

Following Bostock, the conservative legal movement expressed widespread frustration and disillusionment with originalism, as manifested by Senator Josh Hawley’s statement that Bostock “represents the end of the conservative legal movement.” My own anecdotal sense is that the Vermeulian critique of originalism has gained significant momentum among younger legal conservatives since Bostock. Once again, what might seem like mere intellectual history does, in fact, have potentially profound practical consequences, since the triumph of the Vermeulian critique would be the end of the originalist project that has been at the heart of legal conservatism for decades.

波斯托克案之后，保守派法律运动对原旨主义表现出广泛的沮丧与幻灭，如参议员乔什·霍利（Josh Hawley）在声明中称，波斯托克案「标志着保守派法律运动的终结」。我的个人感觉是，自波斯托克案以来，维米尔对原旨主义的批评在年轻法律保守派当中引起了巨大反响。又一次，看似简单的思想史问题，实际却潜藏着巨大实际影响，维米尔批判的胜利，将会是原旨主义项目的终结，而该项目几十年来一直是法律保守主义的核心。

For nearly 50 years, the goal of overruling Roe has united all sides: instrumentalist and non-instrumentalist originalists; critics of originalism’s morality and its defenders. It is the only case that inspires such fervent agreement within the intellectual wing of legal conservatism.

近 50 年来，推翻罗诉韦德案的目标团结起各方：工具主义与非工具主义的原旨主义者；原旨主义道德的批评者，以及其捍卫者。也只有该案，在法律保守主义知识分子中激起了如此热烈的一致意见。

Roe is unique among modern constitutional decisions in the intensity with which it has been resisted. It was, in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words, a “breathtaking” decision; four characteristics of the decision engendered the immediate and enduring backlash. First, Roe was unexpected. No long series of decisions had telegraphed the future recognition of this new right (unlike the Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages). Second, Roe was extraordinarily sweeping in its implications. Roe did not merely invalidate the statute challenged in that case; it (in combination with its companion case, Doe v. Bolton) effectively invalidated the abortion laws of all 50 states and effectively mandated that the right to abortion be protected all the way up to the moment of birth. Third, Roe wrote into America’s fundamental law what many Americans saw then, and see now, as a right to kill babies. Finally, Roe was and is widely perceived as having no plausible legal basis, as commentators from the Right and the Left stated when it was handed down.

罗诉韦德案所受到的强烈抵制，在现代宪法判决中是独一无二的。用露斯·巴德尔·金斯伯格（Ruth Bader Ginsburg）法官的话说，这是个「令人惊叹」的判决；该判决的四个特点引起了直接且持久的反火。首先，罗诉韦德案是意料之外的。没有一长串判决预示这项新权利将在未来得到承认（不像 2015 年奥贝格费尔诉霍奇斯案，法院要求各州承认同性婚姻的判决）。其次，罗诉韦德案影响非常广泛。 罗诉韦德案不仅让案中受挑战的法规无效；它（与其相伴案件多伊诉博尔顿）一道，实际使所有 50 个州的堕胎法无效，并实际规定了堕胎权直到婴儿出生的那一刻都受到保护。第三，罗诉韦德案将许多美国人当时以及现在都认为是杀害婴儿的权利写入了美国的根本法。最后，正如右翼和左翼评论员在判决下达时所说的，罗诉韦德案无论过去还是现在都被广泛认为没有令人信服的法律基础。

As then–Yale law professor John Hart Ely—a supporter of the policy outcome dictated by Roe—noted immediately after the decision, Roe is “bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” Indeed, it is notable that, at the December 1 oral argument in Dobbs, none of the justices or advocates who support Roe devoted much time to defending the decision as an original matter, instead relying primarily on the principle of stare decisis (the idea that the Court should generally stand by its previous decisions, even if they were wrong).

正如当时的耶鲁大学法学教授约翰·哈特·伊利（John Hart Ely）——罗诉韦德案的政策结果的支持者——在判决后立即指出，罗诉韦德案是「坏的，因为它是坏宪法（bad constitutional law），或者说，因为它不是宪法，甚至不太觉得自己有必要像宪法」。其实，值得注意的是，在 12 月 1 日多布斯案的口头辩论中，支持罗诉韦德案的大法官或拥护者都没有花太多时间将该判决作为一个原始问题（original matter）进行辩护，而主要依靠遵循先例（Stare decisis）原则（即法院一般应遵循其以前的判决，即便它们是错误的）。

These characteristics of Roe had different political and legal effects. Politically, Roe became the case that social conservatives would rally against. While the conservative legal movement started as a reaction against the Warren Court, it matured in reaction against the Warren and Burger Courts. The imperative to select justices who would overrule Roe was a major reason that social conservatives joined the broad coalition supporting Ronald Reagan, as reflected in the 1980 Republican Party platform promising “the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

罗诉韦德案的这些特点产生了不同的政治和法律影响。政治上，罗诉韦德案成了社会保守派共同反对的案例。虽然，保守派法律运动最初是对沃伦法院的反应，但它的成熟是对沃伦与伯格法院的反应。挑选愿意推翻罗诉韦德案的大法官的必要性，是社会保守派加入支持罗纳德·里根的广泛联盟的主要原因，这也反映在了 1980 年的共和党纲领，当中承诺「在各级司法机构任命尊重传统家庭价值观以及无辜生命神圣性的法官。」

Yale law professor Robert Bork helped spark a legal counterrevolution when he argued that the Court’s legitimacy rests on its ability to derive principles neutrally from the text and history of the Constitution. 耶鲁法学院教授罗伯特·博克指出最高法院的合法性取决于其从宪法文本和历史中立地推导出原则的能力，这助燃了一场法律上的反革命运动。

It is also the primary reason that antiabortion voters have continued to support the Republican Party in the four decades since 1980, including through bruising (and not always successful) confirmation battles. Even after the deep disappointment of the Court’s refusal to overrule Roe in Casey—a refusal spearheaded by three Reagan- and Bush-nominated justices—these voters stayed with the broader conservative legal movement, always being promised that overruling Roe was just around the corner.

这也是 1980 年以来的 40 年间，经历残酷激烈（并不总是成功）的确认之战，反堕胎的选民持续支持共和党的主要原因。即便在凯西案中，法院拒绝推翻罗诉韦德案——由三位里根和布什提名的大法官带头——使得他们深深失望，这些选民仍然与更广泛的保守派法律运动共进退，他们总是被承诺，推翻罗诉韦德案近在眼前了。

Without these voters, the legal movement would never have achieved the success that it has in remaking the federal judiciary, since political victories are needed to change the orientation of legal institutions. Dahlia Lithwick has rightly observed that “the notion that Roe created an almost irreversible political ‘backlash’ that led to the creation of the powerful modern conservative legal movement is almost an article of faith among legal academics.”

没有这些选民，该法律运动不可能在重塑联邦司法机关方面取得今日的成功，因为要改变法律制度的方向，需要政治上的胜利。黛莉亚·利特维克（Dahlia Lithwick）正确地指出，「罗诉韦德案造成了几乎不可逆转的政治『反火』，导致了强大的现代保守派法律运动的诞生，这在法律学者当中几近信条。」

Legally, Roe catalyzed the nascent conservative legal movement. Legal conservatives from all camps came to see Roe as a constitutional abomination that had to be overturned. From the instrumentalist perspective of judicial-restraint conservatives, Roe remains the most aggressive judicial intervention into American social policy since Brown v. Board of Education. But unlike Brown, which the vast majority of originalists embrace as rightly decided, no plausible originalist argument exists for Roe, so the non-instrumentalist view of originalism has always aligned against Roe, too.

法律上，罗诉韦德案催化了新生的保守派法律运动。各个阵营的法律保守派都对罗诉韦德案深恶痛绝，势必将其推翻。从司法克制保守派的工具主义角度看，罗诉韦德案仍然是自布朗訴托彼卡教育局案以来，美国社会政策遭受的最积极的司法干预。但不同在于，绝大多数原旨主义者认为布朗案是正确的判决，而罗诉韦德案中不存在合理的原旨主义论证，故而，非工具主义的原旨主义也一直是反对罗诉韦德案的。

Overruling Roe would, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it during the Dobbs oral argument, allow the Court to remain “scrupulously neutral on the question of abortion,” an issue that inspires a fervor matched by few in American history. And because originalism’s moral critics within the conservative legal movement are typically social conservatives who regard legalized abortion as a moral evil rivaled in our history only by legalized slavery, they, too, have unflinchingly opposed Roe. Many positions generate significant divisions among legal conservatives, but that Roe is a uniquely lawless decision that must be overruled is not among them.

正如布雷特·卡瓦诺(Brett Kavanaugh)大法官在多布斯口头辩论中所说的，推翻罗诉韦德案将使法院在 「堕胎问题上保持严格中立」，而该问题所激发的热情在美国历史上是鲜有的。在保守派法律运动中，对原旨主义道德的批评通常来自社会保守派，他们认为堕胎合法化是一种道德之恶，在我们历史上，只有奴隶制合法化可与之匹敌，因此他们也毫不犹豫地反对罗诉韦德案。各式各样立场，在法律保守派中引发了重大分歧，除了一点，罗诉韦德案是个独特的无法无天的判决，必须被推翻。

Dobbs has the potential to destroy this unity. Just as the goal of overruling Roe is unique in its ability to unite the movement, the failure to overrule Roe in Dobbs would be unique in its ability to destroy the movement.

多布斯案有可能破坏这种团结。正如推翻罗诉韦德案的目标团结该运动的能力是独特的，假若在多布斯案中未能推翻罗诉韦德案，其摧毁该运动的能力也会是独特的。

Expectations play a decisive role in this dynamic. Though (again, under a proper understanding of the judicial role) those expectations should play no role in the Court’s decision in Dobbs, they are essential in considering the potential effect of Dobbs on the conservative legal movement. On the political side, the failure of the Reagan and Bush appointees to overrule Roe in Casey was a huge blow to the conservative legal movement, and the feeling of disgust after decades of political and legal efforts was palpable. Nonetheless, the movement pressed on over the next 30 years.

期望在此事态中起着决定性作用。尽管（再一次，根据对司法职责的正确理会），这些期望不应影响法院对多布斯案的判决，但在考虑多布斯案对保守派法律运动的潜在影响时，它们是至关重要的。在政治方面，里根和布什任命的大法官未能在凯西案中推翻罗诉韦德案，对于保守派法律运动是一次沉重打击，加之那几十年的政治和法律努力，人们的嫌恶感可想而知。尽管如此，该运动在此后 30 年里仍在继续推进。

In the intervening period, two of the five justices who voted to reaffirm Roe’s central holding in Casey were replaced with committed originalists, as was Justice Ginsburg. Each of those replacements (Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) involved tremendous risks and expenditures of political capital—and, in the cases of Alito and especially Kavanaugh, perseverance through vicious confirmation battles. The conservative legal movement fought those battles with the expectation that, when the day came, the reconstituted Court would finally consign Roe and Casey to the anti-canon of disgraced constitutional cases, alongside its segregation-defending decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

在此期间，五位在凯西案中案中投票重申罗诉韦德案核心要旨的大法官中，两位被坚定的原旨主义者替代，金斯伯格大法官也是。这几次替任的每一次（阿利托、卡瓦诺和艾米·科尼·巴雷特大法官），都涉及巨大的风险和政治资本的付出。此外，阿利托，特别是卡瓦诺，还要忍耐残酷的确认之战。保守派法律运动在这一路奋战中期望，当这一天到来时，重塑后的法院将终于把罗诉韦德案、凯西案，以及普莱西诉弗格森案（1896年）维护种族隔离的判决一道，归入耻辱的宪法反面案例中。

That day has arrived. In its opening brief last summer, Mississippi could have tried (unconvincingly) to argue that its abortion restriction was consistent with Roe and Casey, or that those cases only had to be overruled in part. Instead, it adopted a more coherent approach, spending most of its brief urging the Court to overrule the cases entirely. One reason Mississippi might have taken that approach is that, as Notre Dame law professor Sherif Girgis has argued, there is no logically sound way for the Court to uphold Mississippi’s law without overruling Roe and Casey, since those cases prohibit states from banning abortion before the child reaches viability, as Mississippi’s statute does. Indeed, as noted above, Jackson Women’s Health Organization has made precisely the same argument as Girgis before the Supreme Court: “There are no half-measures here.” The organization reinforced that view at oral argument in response to questions by Justice Gorsuch, as did the solicitor general in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

这一天已经到来。在去年夏天的开场陈述（opening brief）中，密西西比州本可以尝试（毫无说服力地）辩称其堕胎限制与罗诉韦德案及凯西案并不相悖，或者这些案例只需被部分推翻。相反，它采取了更合乎逻辑的做法，陈述几乎通篇都在敦促法院彻底推翻这些案例。密西西比州采取这种做法的一个可能原因是，正如圣母大学法律教授谢里夫·吉吉斯（Sherif Girgis）所认为的，不存在合乎逻辑的办法，让法院在不推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案的情况下支持密西西比州的法律，因为这些案例规定了各州不得禁止堕胎，除非婴儿已拥有存活能力（viability），而密西西比州的法规直接挑战这一点。事实上，如上所述，杰克逊妇女健康组织在最高法院面前提出了与吉吉斯完全相同的论证。「不存在折中办法」，该组织在口头辩论中回答戈萨奇大法官的问题时强调了这一点，支持杰克逊妇女健康组织的副检察长也是。

Regardless of why Mississippi decided to make overruling Roe the focus of its brief, it raised expectations of what the Court would do in Dobbs. Those expectations were reinforced when, in the week after Mississippi filed its brief, almost three-quarters of the amicus briefs filed in support of the state called for overruling Roe and Casey. And they were solidified after oral argument, when at least five of the conservative justices asked questions that were widely interpreted as signaling a willingness to overrule Roe and Casey. With both Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the solicitor general likewise arguing that the Court must either reaffirm or overrule Roe and Casey, legal conservatives now expect that, after nearly 50 years of unceasing effort to overrule Roe, they will finally see the Court do it. If it does not, a sense of betrayal and disillusionment will likely follow.

不管密西西比州为什么决定将推翻罗诉韦德案作为其陈述的重点，这提高了人们在多布斯案中对法院的期望。密西西比州提交诉状后的一周内，近乎四分之三的法庭之友提交陈述支持推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案。当至少有五位保守派大法官提出的问题被广泛解释为表达出推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案的意愿时，这些期待得到了进一步巩固。由于杰克逊妇女健康组织和副检察长都认为，法院必须重申或推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案，法律保守派现在期望，经过近 50 年来推翻罗诉韦德案的不懈努力，他们将终于看到法院这样做。如果没有，随之而来的可能就是背叛感和幻灭感。

That would place enormous strain on the intellectual fault lines within the movement. If a Supreme Court with a 6–3 conservative majority consisting of five committed originalists refuses to overrule Roe and Casey, it is unlikely that any originalist Court will ever do so—raising serious questions within the conservative legal movement about its attachment to originalism. Immediate recriminations and accusations of betrayal would ensue, likely tearing the movement apart. Those who offer a moral critique of originalism would point to Dobbs as proof positive that originalism lacks the moral foundation necessary to be a plausible constitutional methodology. Vermeule has openly predicted that if “Roe (not merely Casey) survives in any form without being overturned [in Dobbs], it will represent a shattering crisis for the conservative legal movement.” If the Court fails to overrule Roe and Casey, there is a very good chance that Vermeule would become the most important intellectual figure in whatever succeeds the current conservative legal movement.

这将给该运动中的知识断层带来巨大压力。如果一个拥有 6-3 保守派多数席位，且其中五位是坚定原旨主义者的最高法院，都拒绝推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案，那任何原旨主义法院都太不可能这么做——这将在保守派法律运动中引起对原旨主义的严重怀疑。紧随而来的，还有责难和背叛的指责，都可能使该运动分崩离析。原旨主义道德的批评者将把多布斯案作为证据，证明原旨主义缺乏必要的道德基础，无法成为一种合理的宪法方法论。维米尔公开预言，「如果罗诉韦德案（不仅仅是凯西案）以任何形式存活下来，[在多布斯案]中没有被推翻，则保守派法律运动将面临破碎的危机。」如果法院未能推翻罗诉韦德案和凯西案，很有可能，维米尔将成为继此之后的保守派法律运动中最重要的思想人物。

Similarly, those advocating an instrumental view of originalism, especially in favor of judicial restraint, would have good reason to question whether originalism actually achieves the restrained judiciary they favor, since the failure to overrule Roe would keep the Court enmeshed in the most contentious social issue in America, without clear constitutional warrant. Some may argue that the more restrained position would be to uphold Roe, since that would be minimally disruptive to American constitutional law.

同样，对原旨主义持工具主义观的人，特别是提倡司法克制的人，将有充分理由怀疑原旨主义是否能真正实现他们所提倡的司法克制，因为，如果不能推翻罗诉韦德案，法院将在没有明确宪法授权的情况下，继续陷入美国最具争议的社会问题中。有人可能会争辩，更克制的立场是维持罗诉韦德案，因为那样对美国宪法的破坏性最小。

But Chief Justice Roberts—the most committed judicial-restraint member of the Court—has shown himself willing to make great changes in constitutional law to keep the Court out of political and social policy if the Court’s intervention has no firm constitutional basis. For example, he wrote the Court’s opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), which held that the federal judiciary has no authority to adjudicate political-gerrymandering challenges to redistricting maps. That controversial decision ended several decades of gerrymandering jurisprudence, but its effect was to withdraw the Court from fraught political and social battles.

不过，首席大法官罗伯茨——法院中对司法克制最为坚定的成员——已经表明，如果法院的干预没有坚实的宪法基础，他愿意对宪法作出巨大改变，使法院不参与政治和社会政策。譬如，在为鲁乔诉共同事业案（2019）撰写的法院意见书中，他认为联邦司法机关无权裁决有关滥划选区（gerrymandering）的法律挑战。这一具争议的判决终结了数十年来关于滥划选区的法学，但其作用是使法院退出了令人头疼的政治与社会斗争。

Those who believe that originalism is the only legitimate methodology of constitutional adjudication would have no logical reason to abandon their view, since it is not based on the results that originalism achieves. But their theoretical arguments would sound less convincing to an audience that had witnessed such a seismic failure of originalism to translate its arguments into reality, just as those arguments have already lost some of their purchase after Bostock. The conservative legal movement has always been an intensely intellectual but also intensely practical movement; a methodology right in theory but self-defeating in practice will not retain many adherents.

认为原旨主义是唯一合法的宪法裁判方法论的人，没有逻辑上的理由放弃他们的观点，因为这并非是基于原旨主义得出的结果。但是，他们的理论论证，对见证了原旨主义在将论证转化为现实方面一败涂地的观众而言，就没那么有说服力了，就像这些论证在波斯托克案之后已经失去一些吸引力一样。保守派法律运动一直是一场热烈的智识运动，但也是一场热烈的实践运动；一种理论上正确，但在实践中适得其反的方法论不会留下太多追随者。

What if the Court instead adopts some middle ground: sustain the Mississippi statute without overruling Roe, but lay the groundwork for overruling Roe later? That is what the Court did in a series of cases leading up to Janus v. AFSCME (2018), in which the Court overruled a previous precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education(1977) , which had allowed public-sector unions to collect union fees from nonunion members. But two key factors render that step-by-step approach implausible in Dobbs.

如果法院转而采取某种折中办法：在不推翻罗诉韦德案的情况下支持密西西比州的法规，为以后推翻罗诉韦德案打下基础，那会怎样？这就是法院在雅努斯诉美国州县市雇员联合会案（2018）之前的一系列案件中的做法，在雅努斯案中，法院推翻了早前的一个先例：阿布诉底特律教育委员会案（1977），该案使得公共部门工会能够向非工会成员收取工会费。但是，有两个关键因素使这种循序渐进的办法在多布斯案中难以令人信服。

First, as Girgis points out, because of the factual context of Dobbs—its straight-on challenge to a core tenet of Roe and Casey—it is impossible for the Court to craft a logical opinion that sets up the eventual overruling of those two decisions, which was not true of the cases preceding Janus. Instead, any middle-ground option would have to divorce the viability standard from Casey’s undue-burden standard, which Girgis rightly argues would fundamentally rewrite Casey in a way that would make it very difficult for this same Court to overrule later.

首先，如吉吉斯指出，由于多布斯案的事实背景——它直接挑战罗诉韦德案和凯西案的核心要旨——法院不可能制定出一个符合逻辑的意见为最终推翻这两个判决做铺垫，而雅努斯之前的案件并非如此。反而，任何折中选项都必须将存活能力标准（viability standard）从凯西案的不当负荷标准（undue-burden standard）中剥离出来，吉吉斯正确地认为，这将从根本上改写凯西案，使同一法院之后很难推翻它。

Second, as noted above, both Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the solicitor general essentially disavowed such a middle-ground option in their briefs and at oral argument, and Mississippi’s briefs effectively acknowledged that an incrementalist approach would be unprincipled or unworkable. Thus, neither side in Dobbs seeks a middle ground, and none of the justices at oral argument—other than perhaps the chief justice—seemed interested in such an approach. In light of those two factors and the expectations of a full overruling, commentators make a serious mistake if they think that a timid, first-step opinion making yet another promise of Roe’s eventual demise would avoid a potentially fatal blow to the conservative legal movement.

其次，如上所述，杰克逊妇女健康组织和副检察长在他们的陈述和口头辩论中基本上不承认这样的折中选项，密西西比州的陈述实际上承认，渐进式的办法将是无原则的或不可行的。因而，在多布斯案中，双方所寻求的都不是折中办法。而且，在口头辩论中，除首席大法官外，没有大法官对这种办法感兴趣。鉴于这两个因素，以及对全面推翻的期望，评论家们如果认为做出一个胆小的、开端式的意见，继续对罗诉韦德案的最终消亡做空头承诺，就将能避免保守派法律运动遭受潜在的致命打击，那就大错特错了。

A forthright overruling of Roe, however, would significantly alleviate the tensions within the movement and bolster its long-term outlook. It would, in the eyes of instrumentalist and non-instrumentalist originalists alike, vindicate their half-century support for originalism. It would take much of the wind out of the sails of originalism’s moral critics, since originalism will have been the means of achieving the critics’ most earnestly sought moral goal. There is likely no avoiding the consequences, then, for the conservative legal movement in Dobbs: complete victory or crisis-inducing defeat.

然而，直接推翻罗诉韦德案将大大缓解该运动内部的张力，并维护其长期前景。在工具主义者和非工具主义者眼中，这将证明他们半世纪以来对原旨主义的支持是正确的。这也能挫挫原旨主义道德的批评者的锐气，因为原旨主义将成为实现批评者们最热切追求的道德目标的手段。那么，对保守派法律运动来说，似乎只能承受多布斯案的后果：完全的胜利，或诱发危机的挫败。