When Linda Wharton CLAW ’81 returns to campus in October as a panelist for a conference on reproductive justice, she will bring a unique perspective -- as both scholar and practitioner -- to her remarks.
Wharton, an associate professor of political science at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, served as lead co-counsel in the landmark abortion rights case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992.
As part of the conference titled “Beyond Roe: Reproductive Justice in a Changing World,” Wharton will tell the story of personally litigating Casey, the impact of the Supreme Court’s pivotal decision and its legacy. She is also the co-author of an article in the latest issue (Volume 24, Issue 1) of the Stanford Law & Policy Review titled “Preserving Roe v. Wade … When You Win Only Half the Loaf,” with her Casey co-lead counsel Kathryn Kolbert.
“Casey has positives and negatives,” Wharton says. “It advanced the link between reproductive autonomy and women’s equality, with the plurality opinion stating that access to abortion was rooted in personal autonomy.” This expansive notion of autonomy, she says, has lead to a solidifying and expansion of constitutional protection for individuals beyond the scope of reproductive justice, especially in the area of gay and lesbian rights.
While the Court reaffirmed Roe with the Casey decision, Wharton says, it also overhauled its holding, “replacing Roe’s highly protective strict scrutiny standard with a new, less protective undue burden test for measuring the constitutionality of restrictions on abortion.” This replacement test and “subsequent judicial rulings that fail to place teeth into the undue burden standard have led to an avalanche of new legal restrictions on abortion,” she says.
But the very fact that the Court did not overturn Roe, as many had anticipated before the Casey decision, Wharton says, may have lulled the pro-choice public into complacency. “Casey was perceived as a win and people relaxed,” she says, which has actually limited the ability of abortion advocates in the last two decades to help preserve this still-fragile constitutional right.
Wharton became involved as co-counsel in Casey through her position as the managing attorney of the Women’s Law Project, a public interest law firm located in Philadelphia, where she specialized in litigation and law reform relating to gender discrimination.
Upon graduating from law school, Wharton was a law clerk to the Hon. Dolores K. Sloviter, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and then an associate with the law firm of Dechert Price & Rhoads in Philadelphia.
While at Dechert, Wharton had the opportunity through the firm’s pro bono outreach to work with the Women’s Law Project to secure a federal injunction against Operation Rescue, restricting the group’s proponents from blockading the entrances and exits of local abortion clinics.
Wharton’s passion for a career in women’s rights was inspired by coursework at the law school and her connection with Ann Freedman, a Rutgers Law professor and a co-founder of the Women’s Law Project. Her work at Dechert provided experience in litigation and, coincidentally, opened the door to working at the WLP. She joined the Women’s Law Project staff in 1989 and remained with the organization until 1997.
Wharton also serves as a consultant on issues of gender equity in education and constitutional protection for women’s rights. She has taught courses in sex discrimination law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and Rutgers School of Law.
At Stockton, she teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Women and the Law, Civil Liberties, Gender and Political Action and Advanced Constitutional Litigation. Her scholarly research and writing focuses on issues of state and federal constitutional law with a special concentration in the law of gender discrimination. She is the former chair of Board of Directors of the National Women’s History Project.
The Rutgers Law–Camden conference is available for CLE credit and is cosponsored by the Women and Health Initiative of the Institute for Women’s Leadership (Rutgers University), the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Women’s Law Project, the Rutgers Institute for Professional Education and the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, based at Rutgers Law–Newark.
“Beyond Roe” will be held in the Law School Complex, located at Fifth and Penn Streets on the Rutgers–Camden campus. Directions to Rutgers–Camden are available at camden.rutgers.edu/page/visit-campus.
Registration is required for this public event. To register, visit camlaw.rutgers.edu/beyond-roe-conference/.