Plugging the Leak
The U.S. Supreme Court announced last week that after an extensive investigation, it has no idea who leaked the draft opinion in the ruling in the Dobbs case last spring, the case which overturned Roe v. Wade.
My initial reaction is that someone is covering for someone else…and I still have that hunch…but the Supreme Court Marshal issued a 20-page report, noting that 126 formal interviews were conducted with 97 employees, plus a variety of computer forensics measures were used…and still, despite calling it a “grave assault” on the function of the Court, apparently it was all but impossible to re-trace internal operations.
Law clerks themselves were cleared…but the report did not that some of them admitted telling their spouses about the opinion and vote count, which is in violation of the clerks’ code of conduct. The report does not indicate if justices or their spouses were interviewed.
About 100 people in all had access to the draft, with the report indicating that many employees printed out more than one copy.
So we don’t know who was responsible, but we do know that it apparently was quite easy for a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion to be accessed and printed without a digital trail. The average law firm has greater security measures in place, apparently, than the highest court in the land—which, of course, means this easily could happen again.
I still bet that one of the justices who wanted to see Roe overturned leaked the document, to make it harder for moderate Chief Justice John Roberts to convince one of the five to flip…he wanted a ruling that stopped short of overturning Roe and was leaning on the newest justices in particular. After the leak, they held firm…perhaps to not be seen as flip-flopping or bowing to inside or outside pressure.
But it’s not like we’ll know, unless someone comes forward now or in the future. In the meantime, the very real chance still exists that we may see another leak in a pivotal case in the future. And that undermines the credibility of any court.
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