This is the inside story of how the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion — shooting down compromise and testing the boundaries of how the law is decided.

To dismantle that decision, Justice Alito and others had to push hard, the records and interviews show. Some steps, like his apparent selective preview of the draft opinion, were time-honored ones. But in overturning Roe, the court set aside more than precedent: It tested the boundaries of how cases are decided.

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    The timing of her death highlighted a singular feature of the federal judicial system: The United States is the world’s only major constitutional democracy without term limits or a mandatory retirement age for its highest judges.

    Justice Kavanaugh, facing a narrow confirmation vote in 2018, had assured Democratic senators that he considered Roe to be “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis,” or adhering to past decisions.

    As Mr. Stewart, the Mississippi solicitor general, prepared for his turn at the lectern during oral arguments, he was urged by conservatives among the elite Supreme Court bar to mention a middle ground that might appeal to the chief justice and help ensure at least a partial victory.

    The strategy was “to really put pressure on what this was going to mean, for the integrity of the court, to reverse such a longstanding, individual, personal liberty, and the chaos that it was going to create,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the clinic, in an interview.

    The young lawyers, dependent on court relationships for future jobs, were asked for access to their personal phones; location data going back nearly a year; and emails, texts, voice messages and photos.

    Amid all the procedural questions surrounding Dobbs, “the leak is the biggest potential stain on the case, especially if it was intended to influence deliberations,” said William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and former clerk to Chief Justice Roberts.

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