Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and a retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dog walker who lives and works in Contoocook.

With all the dysfunction we see in Washington these days, it can be tempting to lose faith in the system of government we Americans have chosen to live under. But from time to time, the system works exactly as intended. Here are two examples.

Back in February, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an opinion in which it held that frozen embryos, created for in vitro fertilization (IVF) are persons. Among the responses to that decision was a suspension of IVF services at clinics across the state. Clinics feared the legal liabilities to which they might be exposed in a world in which embryos are considered to be persons.

Many criticized the Alabama Supreme Court for its decision. But, from a legal and jurisprudential standpoint, the Court probably got it right.

The question before the Court was whether three couples had a cause of action – a legal basis for seeking redress – against a fertility clinic that was storing their embryos, but, allegedly, did so negligently, thus allowing the embryos to be destroyed. Relying upon an 1872 statute, the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, the Court ruled that the couples did have a cause of action because their embryos were persons for purposes of the act.

That is all the Court decided. A contrary decision, one that would not have resulted in the suspension of IVF services in Alabama, would also have left the plaintiff couples without a legal remedy for the very real injury they suffered.

As I have noted, the decision led Alabama clinics to suspend IVF services due to liability concerns. But the availability of IVF services in Alabama was not before the Court. Its only task was to decide whether the couples had a cause of action against the clinics that stored their embryos.

Every judge I have ever clerked for strove mightily to decide only what was before him or her, and that’s just what the Alabama Supreme Court did in this case.

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Then, when the broader repercussions of the decision began to be felt, the Alabama legislature passed a bill granting civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers. Job done, and done by exactly the right branch of government. The system worked.

Several months later something similar happened in Arizona. Before Arizona even became a state, the territory enacted a near-total ban on abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made the 1864 Arizona abortion ban unconstitutional. After Dobbs overruled Roe v. Wade, the Arizona Supreme Court was called upon to decide the status of the 1864 abortion law. The question before the Court was a narrow one: whether a 2022 Arizona statute that banned abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy had created a legal right to abortion in Arizona by repealing the 1864 ban.

After construing the 2022 statute, the Court ruled that it had not repealed the 1864 ban. Thus, after Roe v. Wade, the last word on the right to an abortion in Arizona was the 1864 law.

Like the Alabama Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court decided a narrow question, and probably got it right. Critics were appalled that the Arizona Supreme Court left the 1864 statute in place, but after deciding that the 2022 statute didn’t repeal the 1864 ban, the Court had done all it could do. It had the power to decide whether the legislature had repealed the 1864 ban, but it did not have the power to repeal the 1864 law. That power rested with the legislature, and the legislature exercised that power in short order when it repealed the 1864 law.

Now here’s my point. In both Alabama and Arizona, critics assailed the decisions of the states’ supreme courts because they were unhappy with the practical consequences of those decisions. But a disagreeable outcome does not make a court’s decision legally incorrect. That principle is especially important to bear in mind where, as here, the courts could have reached the critics’ desired outcomes only by exceeding the scope of their authority, i.e., by deciding matters not properly before the court in Alabama, or by usurping the power of the legislature in Arizona. In each case, the court stayed in its lane, the legislature responded, and the system worked.

My focus here is not on the final outcomes, but on the process. In each case, I take great comfort from the fact that a narrowly decided court case pointed out a potential need for legislative action, and the Alabama and Arizona legislatures responded.

In the end, I am pleased that IVF providers have been given legal protection in Alabama and that the 1864 Arizona abortion ban has been repealed, but I am even more pleased that those outcomes resulted from legislative action rather than judicial overreach.

To my eyes, those are both shining examples of the system working properly.