Laurence Tribe - The Equal Rights Amendment at Long Last

[snot]

62. Thinking this through further...

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the S. Ct. applied an extremely strict, originalist interpretation to the Constitution, as amended, to overturn Roe and conclude that (without the ERA), women have even fewer Constitutional rights than we thought they had.

If the S. Ct. were going to apply their strict constructionist approach consistently, they should now agree with Tribe that since the Constitution contains no time limit on ratification, Congress could not unilaterally effectively add one.

But if that's correct, it would mean that the ERA HAS been effective since the date of the last required ratification, which would in turn mean that the Constitution, as amended, did protect the rights that the S. Ct. held in Dobbs it didn't.

It seems to me that this ouroboros should be addressed in any honest reasoning about the legalities, or at least in any practical discussion of what the S Ct. might be inclined to do about them.

I think I'm going to put this in an OP, because I'd really like to hear others' thoughts on this.