Amicus Briefs and Expert Reports
Key amicus briefs and expert reports considering history and tradition in support of reproductive rights. Summaries and links to each filing are organized below as follows: State court amicus, federal court amicus, state court expert reports.
Amicus Briefs in State Constitutional Cases
Brief of Amici Curiae Professors Eileen McDonagh, Linda McClain and James Flemming in Support of Plaintiffs-Respondents, submitted in Access Independent Health Services v. Wrigley (North Dakota Supreme Court 2025)
The amici curiae have a particular interest in the intersection between the constitutional rights of reproductive freedom and self-defense, including in instances where an abortion would protect the mother’s bodily integrity. Amici discuss the history and scope of the right to self-defense in North Dakota and argue it guarantees a parallel constitutional right to abortion care.
Brief of Constitutional Accountability Center as Amicus Curiae in Support of Plaintiffs and Affirmance, submitted in Access Independent Health Services v. Wrigley (North Dakota Supreme Court 2025)
Amici Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) is a think tank and public interest law firm dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the U.S. Constitution’s text and history. CAC has studied how the Declaration of Independence inspired and influenced provisions in the U.S. Constitution, as well as state constitutional individual rights protections. Amicus argues that the text, structure, and history of the North Dakota Constitution establish the Inalienable Rights Clause as a sweeping protection for individual rights. And, further, that consistent with that history, the North Dakota Supreme Court has construed the Inalienable Rights Clause in an expansive manner, employing reasoning which makes clear that the right to reproductive autonomy is part and parcel of the rights to life, liberty, safety, and happiness.
Brief of Amici Curiae Professors of Law and History, submitted in SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective v. Georgia (Georgia Supreme Court 2025)
Amici, professors and historians with expertise in politics, law and social history, particularly in Georgia and the American South, provide the Court with an accurate historical perspective of Georgia’s approach to abortion regulation at the time of ratification and within the context of Georgia’s constitutional evolution during the post-Civil War and Reconstruction era. Based on analysis of primary historical sources, amici demonstrate that at the time of ratification, Georgians understood that early-term abortions were lawful, and that Georgia’s 1868 Constitution embodied a shift to more strongly protect individual freedoms. In contrast, Georgia’s first ever statutory prohibition of abortion post-dated the constitutional ratification by nearly a decade and was inextricably linked to prejudices against women and Black people.
Amicus Brief of Historians with Expertise in the History of Abortion Medicine, Law, and Regulation in Support of Appellees, submitted in Zurawski v. Texas (Texas Supreme Court 2023)
Amici curiae are historians with expertise in the history of abortion medicine, law, and regulation. Amici demonstrate that Texas’s history and tradition—including longstanding legislative history, medical guidance, and enforcement practices—support a deeply rooted constitutional right to abortion to preserve the life and health of the pregnant person.
Brief of Amici Curiae State Constitutional Law Professors and Scholars in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees, submitted in Zurawski v. Texas (Texas Supreme Court 2023)
Amici curiae are a group of preeminent law professors and legal scholars with expertise in the history, development, and interpretation of state constitutions. Amici focus on the meaning and scope of the right to life guaranteed by the Texas Constitution and its proper application to a pregnant person suffering life- or health-threatening medical complications. In particular, amici discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the Texas Constitution and historic meaning of the right to life as guaranteed by the Texas Constitution.
Brief of Amici Curiae Professors of History and Law in Support of Governor’s Executive Brief, submitted in Whitmer v. Linderman (Michigan Supreme Court 2022)
Amici curiae are professors of law and history who research, write, and teach about legal history and constitutional law, including a scholarly focus on the history of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and the Constitution. Amici provide historical context regarding the development of Michigan’s abortion-related laws and newly available historical evidence demonstrating that Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban cannot be squared with subsequent developments in Michigan law, especially with the 1963 state constitution’s deep commitment to equality under law.
Amicus Brief of Idaho Constitutional Law Professors, submitted in Planned Parenthood Great Northwest v. Idaho (Idaho Supreme Court 2022)
Amici, scholars and professors of state constitutional law, who have studied Idaho’s history, constitution, and caselaw in depth over decades, offer the Court a framework for applying that history and law to interpretation of Idaho’s constitutional law. Amici consider the history of the Idaho Constitution’s enactment in 1890, its inclusion of unique rights-conferring language, and provide analysis demonstrating that Idaho’s Constitution protects unenumerated rights more strongly than the federal Constitution, including for personal autonomy, privacy, and procreation.
Amicus Briefs in Federal Constitutional Cases
Brief of Amicus Curiae Historians in Support of Plaintiff-Appellant, submitted in GenBioPro, Inc. v. Raynes (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit 2024)
Amici curiae are history professors whose areas of focus include medical history, reproductive health, and law. Amici address the history state regulation of medicine dating back to the 18th Century and the emergence of federal regulation of pharmaceuticals in the early 20th Century.
Brief of Amicus Curiae Center for Reproductive Rights in Support of Petitioner, United submitted in States v. Zackey Rahimi (U.S. Supreme Court 2023)
Amicus Curiae, the Center for Reproductive Rights (the “Center”), works to ensure reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights. The Center addresses the constitutional and real-world harms of intimate partner gun violence on pregnant and postpartum people and the lower court’s misinterpretation of Bruen as an incomplete reading of history and tradition. The Center addresses the history of laws that affirmatively authorized exclusion of pregnant people from constitutional protection and argues that the Court should reject a history and tradition approach that denies pregnant people full constitutional protection and is contrary to core constitutional principles of autonomy and safety in private life.
Brief for Amici Curiae American Historical Association and Organization for American Historians in Support of Respondents, submitted in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (U.S. Supreme Court 2021)
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the largest professional organization in the world devoted to the study and promotion of history and historical thinking. The Organization of American Historians (OAH) is the largest scholarly organization devoted to the history of the United States, and to promoting excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of that history. Amici provide the Court an accurate historical perspective informed by newly accessible historical evidence on state regulation of abortion and public understanding and practice of abortion from the founding to the post-Civil War.
Brief for Amici Curiae American Society for Legal History and Other Scholars with Expertise in the Law, History, and Politics of Reproduction in the United States in Support of Respondents, submitted in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (U.S. Supreme Court 2021)
Amici American Society for Legal History and individual historians and academics, address petitioners’ inaccurate account of the history of the abortion debate in the United States and clarify the historical record on this topic. In particular, amici demonstrate that the legality and morality of abortion have been the subjects of debate for centuries and conflicts over abortion in the United States predated Roe, including state regulations that oscillated between more and less permissive.
Expert Reports in State Constitutional Cases
Expert Report of Karissa Haugeberg, Ph.D, submitted in Access Independent Health Services, Inc. v. Wrigley (District Court, South Central Judicial District ND 2024)
Karissa Haugeberg is a historian who specializes in the history of gender, medicine, and politics in the United States. Professor Haugeberg’s report addresses the history of abortion in North Dakota at and around the time of statehood. Based on experience researching the history of U.S. abortion politics, study of archival records pertaining to abortion history, and primary source research on North Dakota history-- including historic newspapers, medical journals, and laws, Professor Haugeberg addresses North Dakota’s history and tradition of allowing North Dakotans to obtain abortions for health reasons.
Expert Disclosure and Report of Nicholas L. Syrett, Ph.D., submitted in Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach (District Court of Johnson County, Kansas Civil Court 2023)
Nicholas L. Syrett is a historian who focuses on gender, sexuality, and childhood in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United States. He is especially interested in the ways that gender, sex, and age are regulated by the law and the consequences of those laws for Americans. Professor Syrett’s report addresses the history of reproductive control within the United States and Kansas and how features of modern abortion restrictions in Kansas constitute a form of reproductive control that may use different mechanisms from their historical antecedents, but similarly are based on and perpetuate the historical subordination of women.
Expert Disclosure and Report of Nadia N. Sawicki, J.D., submitted in Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach (District Court of Johnson County, Kansas Civil Court 2023)
Nadia N. Sawicki is a legal scholar who specializes in torts, health law, and bioethics. Professor Sawicki’s report addresses the origins of the informed consent doctrine, and core principles of informed consent that courts have historically and consistently articulated over decades: protecting patients’ bodily autonomy by requiring physicians to disclose medically accurate information about the risks and benefits of a proposed health care treatment and its alternatives. Further, Professor Sawicki’s report addresses how the history and development of informed consent in common law inform the scope of permissible state regulation of medical practice, including Kansas’s abortion disclosure laws.