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What the Hell Is Going On

WTH is Going On with Roe v. Wade? John Yoo Explains the Supreme Court Leak

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

Politics, Government, History, News

4.4633 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week we saw the first leak in Supreme Court history – a draft opinion that reversed the landmark Roe v Wade ruling of 1973 and shot the topic of abortion back into the headlines. Former Supreme Court clerk John Yoo joins Dany and Marc again to discuss the legal implications of overturning Roe v Wade, the reasoning behind the leak, and the options before the nation’s voters as they weigh the prospective ruling. Is Roe good law? Does it matter? And do the American people care that issues before the highest court in the land and the nomination of justices have taken on the “character of a political campaign.” 

These questions and more on this week’s episode with guest John Yoo. Yoo is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He is currently the Emmanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley school of law. He is a scholar at both the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution.

Download the transcript here.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.

0:03.0

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?

0:01.1

Who in God's name knows what

0:22.4

it's all about. Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka. And I'm Mark Teeson. Welcome to our podcast.

0:38.5

What the hell is going on?

0:40.5

Mark, what the hell?

0:42.0

What the hell is going on is there was a leak of a Supreme Court decision, an early draft,

0:48.6

overturning Roe versus Wade.

0:50.5

And a lot of people's collective heads have exploded.

0:53.4

There is a ton of commentary going

0:55.8

on on this. You have protesters that have unleashed on the homes of conservative Supreme Court

1:01.5

justices. Justice Alito has actually had to leave his home and move his family on the advice of

1:06.5

the Supreme Court Security Service. They have their own police department, which many people

1:10.2

didn't know,

1:17.0

that's designed to protect the justices. And it looks like Roe is going to be overturned. And there are some people who are not so happy about that, Danny. Now, this is one of those issues where you and I disagree.

1:22.1

You are pro-choice. I am pro-life. So what are your thoughts on this whole development? We were chatting about this before we started recording, and I think, Mark, you said that I and our return guest, John, you, are of the same opinion, which is that we're both pro-choice, but we don't like Roe. And I think the very simple reason for that, and I won't speak for him, but I will speak for me, is that Roe is

1:44.9

bad law. I don't like it. I, I, he would. I don't like it when we are governed by dictators.

1:51.8

I don't like it when our justices who really do have extraordinary power in this country,

1:57.5

if you think about it. I don't like it when they interpret the Constitution

2:01.7

in ways that are, I think, beyond the scope of the Constitution. There's nothing in the

2:06.6

Constitution about abortion. And those people who argue that this isn't about abortion,

2:13.0

it's about women's rights and women's bodies. I would argue that it's not just about women's

...

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