Turtles ... er, Decisions ... All the Way Down

In a recent Garrison Center column, I argue that the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the opposite of "decentralization":

Per Roe, decisions concerning abortion were largely decentralized to the lowest possible level, that of individual choice. Agree with the logic of the decision or not, that was its effect.

Per Dobbs, such decisions are now largely centralized into the hands of state legislatures.

I stand by that argument ... but there's actually more to the problem of "centralization" versus "decentralization."

First, there's who decides whether Person X can or will have an abortion. Under Roe, the answer to that question was decentralized from state legislatures to Person X and her doctor. Under Dobbs, the answer was recentralized from Person X and her doctor to state legislatures.

But then there's the question of who decides who decides whether person X can or will have an abortion? The answer to that question in both cases is highly centralized: The nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States decide who decides. They just decided one way in Roe and another way in Dobbs.

And who decides who decides who decides whether person X can or will have an abortion? That is, who made the SCOTUS justices the boss of all that?

The very far, fringe, most "decentralized" answer would be "the few hundred people -- a tiny fraction of one percent of the population of the United States circa 1788 -- who ratified the US Constitution and imposed it on the other three million."

But some people would offer an even more "centralized" answer to the question and say that four people -- John Marshall, William Paterson, Samuel Chase, and Bushrod Washington -- made themselves and their successors the boss of all that, perhaps illicitly, with their ruling in Marbury v. Madison.

But then when we get to the question of who decides who decides who decides who decides whether person X can or will have an abortion, that would re-decentralize things to all of the people who decided to up and have a revolution taking that decision away from George III and resulting eventually in the Constitution, Marbury v. Madison, Roe v. Wade, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

And back on down through the episodes of history to when Adam delved and Eve span, etc., centralizing and decentralizing and re-centralizing and re-decentralizing. If you believe in a supernatural creator, I guess that's the ultimate/final centralization, isn't it?