The Hawley Rule: Senator Josh Hawley Introduces A New Pro-Life Litmus Test For Supreme Court Nominations

This week Missouri Senator Josh Hawley threw down the gauntlet to his Senate colleagues, the White House and any future Supreme Court nominees by introducing a new test for any nominee for SCOTUS.

Under the Hawley Rule, the Senator will only vote to confirm a nominee if they "have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided."

In explaining his decision Hawley lays out the legal, political and moral case against Roe:

"In forty-seven years, this moral and social injustice has taken the lives of 61 million unborn children. Republicans have said, “Vote for us, and we will undo this wrong. We will return this issue to the people.” And yet, all these years later, eleven Republican-appointed justices later, here we are. The nation is apparently no closer to the day when the Supreme Court will renounce this outrage, renounce its imperial pretensions, and allow the good and decent people of this nation to debate and decide this matter for ourselves.

And so I say to my Republican colleagues: How long must this go on? How many more elections must there be? How many more promises must be made? How many more justices must be appointed before we will expect of our nominees what the voters already expect of us? How long before we ask our nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States to recognize Roe as the outrage that it is?

Let’s just be frank. Roe is an illegitimate decision. It has no basis in the Constitution. None. It has no basis in the law. None of the Constitution’s specific and enumerated guarantees of privacy even begin to legitimize the taking of innocent human life."

He further explains how the rule would operate in practice:

"I say again: I will vote for those nominees only, and for those nominees alone. And when I say “explicitly acknowledged,” I mean on the record, before their nomination. I do not want forecasts about future votes or future behavior, because frankly, I wouldn’t believe them. I don’t want promises of any sort. I want evidence that Supreme Court nominees will obey the Constitution and the law. I want to see in the record clear acknowledgment that a nominee understands Roe to be the travesty that it is. If that record is not there, then I will not support the nomination. I don’t care who does the nominating."

Now this may not be the exact test we would support for SCOTUS or Court of Appeals nominees but it is the best one that any sitting senator has committed to. 

We encourage you to contact your senators and encourage them to commit to support the Hawley Rule and pledge to hold any judicial nominee for the appellate court or SCOTUS to a pro-life standard. Enough is enough. 

We also encourage you to support Senator Hawley and consider supporting his campaign via WinRed.