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V cyndicate debut card lock picks1/4/2024 ![]() Other times it was the opposite, as he clung to notions that were already becoming anachronistic in the last half of the 17th century.Ĭonsider the marital rape exemption. But what happens when you trace citations back to their ancient source? In Hale’s case, you sometimes find a man conceiving precepts out of thin air. “Hale wrote that if a physician gave a woman ‘with child’ a ‘potion’ to cause an abortion, and the woman died, it was ‘murder’ because the potion was given ‘unlawfully to destroy her child within her,’” Alito wrote.Ĭourts have long leaned on precedents established by old cases and the scholarship of legal authorities from centuries gone by. “Two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale likewise described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision,’” Alito wrote.Įven before “quickening” - defined by Alito as “the first felt movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy” - Hale believed an abortion could qualify as homicide. He wrote a two-volume legal treatise, “The History of the Pleas of the Crown,” that has proved influential ever since.Īlito, in his draft opinion, invokes “eminent common-law authorities,” including Hale, to show how abortion was viewed historically not as a right, but as a criminal act. In his time (Hale’s contemporaries included Oliver Cromwell and Charles II), Hale was a respected, perhaps even venerated, jurist known for piety and sober judgment. Hale became Lord Chief Justice of England in 1671. Hale once wrote a long letter to his grandchildren, dispensing life advice, in which he veered into a screed against women, describing them as “chargeable unprofitable people” who “know the ready way to consume an estate, and to ruin a family quickly.” Hale particularly despaired of the changes he saw in young women, writing, “And now the world is altered: young gentlewomen learn to be bold” and “talk loud.” An excerpt from Hale’s “Letter of Advice.” Credit: But Alito’s opinion resurrects Hale, a judge who was considered misogynistic even by his era’s notably low standards. Hale’s influence in the United States has been on the wane since the 1970s, with one state after another abandoning his legal principles on rape. Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever.
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