Supreme court rulings are law in this country because of Marbury v. Madison. You can try to claim precedent and law are somehow different, I think you'd have an incredibly hard time convincing most people.
Marbury v Madison established judicial review, meaning that the courts can strike down unconstitutional law. It does not give the courts legislative ability.
Maybe you're using a fuzzier definition of "law", but there was never any federal legislation that guaranteed access to abortion. That is what we need.
You are apparently unfamiliar with the legal systems in the US (the federal system and 49 states), which are Common Law[0] systems (Louisiana uses a French style "Civil Law" system):
"In law, common law, also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law, is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions.[2][3][4] The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts."
Huh that is surprising! "There is no federal general common law"
Though it does kind of make sense, after all it's the United States of America, not the United People's of America, or the United Local Jurisdictions of America.
The States can have rights that supersedes the people apparently.
>Huh that is surprising! "There is no federal general common law"
My reading of the particular passage[0] in the Wikipedia article is that while Federal courts are no longer independent sources of common law, they operate along with other systems that are, and often impact the common law of the several states with rulings that set the limits of Federal, State and individual power.
It wouldn't make sense the other way around, since whenever individual rights contradict that of the State's, the federal court(s) would effectively undo the basis of their sovereignty.
> It does not give the courts legislative ability.
But it does. Our common law system treats judicial rulings as law. There is nothing stopping the supreme court from ruling on literally anything they like. They could make cars illegal in the next session if they wanted.
