all) to the U.S. Constitution, consistent with Article III, which defines Supreme Court interpretive jurisdiction in terms of constitutional issues. While a particular morality or a particular professional point of view may be said to inform a given brief, the manifest argument appears meant to prevail by reason of connection to a constitutional point. The second char acteristic, related to the first, is the shared perspective of antichoice advocates. Despite idiosyncratic perspectives of the briefs, distinguishing them each from the other, certain of their arguments overlap and converge, chiefly, as might be expected, in the view that an unborn fetus has constitutionally protected rights. The third characteristic, again related to the other two, has to do with argumentative content of RTL rhetoric as analyzed by Solomon (54-5), specifically the assertion of an unmediated continuum of human life from conception to birth, and attached to the view that the state has a compelling interest in assuring that the continuum will not be broken, consistent with equal-protection constitutional provisions or with assertion of government jurisdiction over the whole range of issues sur rounding questions of abortion.
The dilemma for RTL advocates that was created by conflict between the implications of political conservatism, entailing respect for established law as a matter of morality, and social conservatism, entailing a specific moral vision conceptualized as an ideal of law, was resolved by means of a rhetorically con structed social reality, conceptualized in moral terms, from which (1) moral interpretation of the law and the world view informing it and (2) moral rationalization of actions aimed at overturning both law and world view could proceed. RTL social critique of the is entailed calls to conscience and the should of moral order, as well as reference to the was of the better-or dered and more rational former days. Argumentation was do...