05/05/2022

A Draft, a Leak and an Inflection Point in Supreme Court History

The court is up in arms over the matter

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in a draft opinion leaked to Politico deciding the Mississippi abortion case, held that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong from the start.” Lawyers and judges are fond of the word egregious. In a press release, Chief Justice John Roberts called the leak a “singular and egregious breach of…trust that is an affront to the Court.”Roberts wants an investigation that might expose who did it.

Who leaked it? Who did it? A clerk, a secretary of one of the justices? A janitor? Or a disgruntled justice him or herself?

And what did the leaker hope to accomplish? Who is the latter-day Daniel Ellsberg? A liberal who concluded that premature disclosure of Alito’s draft might spur a public outcry that would undercut the decision? Or a conservative who, sensing that some of the majority justices might go wobbly after seeing such an unconvincing opinion in print, would be more dug in since it was all out there?

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Hill.