‘Nightmare scenario’: Roe v Wade threat strikes at Americans’ trust in democracy, says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian

‘If you have any reservations about the system’s capacity to deliver justice, they have just been affirmed’

Historian Jon Meacham said the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion moving to overturn Roe v Wade and the federal right to abortion in all of the US strikes at Americans’ trust in democracy.

On Morning Joe on MSNBC on Tuesday, host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican House Representative from Florida, said that “the court has always been guided by the law, but it’s also been keenly aware that it is the only unelected branch of American government”.

“They needed to not appear to be openly contemptuous of public opinion. That would be especially true today, given the GOP’s ‘might makes right’ approach to the sacking of Merrick Garland’s nomination, or the elevation of Donald Trump’s final pick,” Scarborough said, referring to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Scarborough went on to note that Democrats have won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1992, with the exception of 2004.

“Look at this picture from [former Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright’s funeral. The five Democratic politicians on the front row won the most votes in the presidential elections of 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020,” he said.

“Yet, a half-century of constitutional rights supported by over 70 per cent of Americans ... will be swept away by the presidents not in this picture and the presidents who were outvoted in each one of those elections over the last three decades,” he added.

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore attend the funeral service for Madeleine Albright (AFP via Getty Images)

“Now, Americans will rightly conclude that their voices and their votes no longer matter. So what are the implications for the court, for the law, and for American democracy?” Scarborough said.

Mr Meacham said that “the crisis of trust in institutions has just become universal in a way that is pretty much the nightmare scenario, if you believe in the ultimate efficacy of the constitutional order to produce a more perfect union, right?”

“To protect the Jeffersonian assertion of equality, to protect the rule of law, for all its imperfections,” he added. “The system has been worth defending for 250 years. Right now, if this draft decision, if the court were to go this far, you will have, as you were just saying, an extraordinary number of Americans believing that the system, in fact, cannot, is not capable of delivering justice, is not capable of reflecting the popular will, even through the constitutional prism.

“I think that ... the great question of the era is, are you and I, are we in this decade, are we up to democracy? Are we commensurate to the task?” he asked.

“I’m worried that we’re entering the darkest period of that test. Because if you have any reservations about the system’s capacity to deliver justice, they have just been affirmed,” he said.