Not sure it's a great idea for someone to tweet this kind of speculation when there are so many whack jobs out there looking to find a bad guy in this.

I'm pretty sure it is a terrible idea to call people out by name. I'm willing to speculate by category, but that's as far as I would go.

When the news first broke, my first thought was that a left-leaning clerk or justice was the source. But I quickly changed my mind. If anything, the leak increases the likelihood of a final majority opinion in favor of overturning Roe directly. No matter how much outrage there is over the opinion, I don't think any justice would want to be seen as switching sides in response to public pressure. I can't rule out the possibility that a left-leaning clerk intentionally leaked the opinion as a desperation measure, but it doesn't seem likely.

I can think of two scenarios in which a right-wing clerk or justice might think that a leak was a good tactical move. If you were worried that Kavanaugh or Barrett was a threat to defect to the Roberts camp (which would narrow the holding), you might conclude that a leak was a good tactical move. And if Kavanaugh or Barrett had already defected to the Roberts camp, you might think that a leak would shame that justice into returning to the majority.

All that said, a leak doesn't make a lot of sense for anyone. If a clerk intentionally leaked the opinion, that clerk has ruined his or her legal career. Most people who work hard enough to end up clerking on the Supreme Court are not looking for ways to kill their careers. A right-wing clerk might be able to parlay the leak into a career as a talking head in the far right derposphere, but I would like to think that no clerk aspires to be Mike Cernovich.

I don't know what happens if a justice intentionally leaked the opinion. At a minimum, that justice would have ruined his or her relationship with the other justices. And I suspect there would be efforts to remove the justice from the court.

If a clerk is the source of the leak, I think it is possible that the clerk did not intend for the draft opinion to end up in the press. More specifically, I think that it is possible that a clerk on either the right or left broke protocol and shared the opinion with someone who betrayed the clerk's confidence and gave the opinion to the press.

Speculation on who released it

"ironic" is not the correct term. Hypocrisy is.

No one will offer a reason why the Bible does not condemn or define abortion as a wrong or a sin, and why God in so many instances calls for abortions to be done for a myriad of trivial reasons.

There is no way to read the bible and not believe God is pro abortion.

laggy does not counter that and instead just says 'if God calls for abortion it is good as god is necessarily good' but then jumps to 'if man does it is wrong' in the biggest logical fallacy of them all. Without god specifically commenting on abortion as a sin, in a book that can be described as in part 'the big book of sins god says you are not to do' the logically consistent inference is that god just does not care if mankind has abortions.

Which if you believe in a Christian god would actually make sense. That god does not ultimately care or get involved in either the duration or quality of our lives. All of our lives whether crappy (homeless person) or great (rich person) are meaningless to him and but a blip in time. He cares about creating a vessel to attach a soul that will embrace him and join him in heaven eventually.

Whether that 'eventually' is pre birth or after 100 years of life is all but meaningless to a timeless being.

But laggy, you do follow a murderous religion even if you feel you do not need to defend it.

There are countless passages in the bible where God or others are calling for abortions and murder of new borns.

You would never deny the request of god right? You believe his instructions should be followed right?

I know you will say nothing in those two passages is "immoral" because if god commands it, it is necessarily good but you do recognize it is still a call for murder right? Even if you say it 'Just' murder.

I am really curious if anyone disagrees that the Dem's see this as a valuable political football for the midterms, in a cycle it looked like they would get slaughtered and as such they do not want to take any steps to deal with it prior?

There are several paths the Dem's could take to impact this ruling if, indeed, they are against it.

Biden could speak very publicly about an 'obvious need for SC reform' and that he will be moving to do so. Such threats to the SC have been part of getting the SC in the past to change very partisan views and by more reasonable.

Biden could reach across the aisle to 2 or more Republicans to create a carve out exception to the filibuster for this issue only, so the gov't could pass Federal Abortion rights. It seems to me Murkowski and Collins would be on board, and perhaps a few others to offset the risk of Manchin and Sinema finding an envelope with $5 in it and then voting against.

Instead of seeing these tough postures, the very first thing Biden does is say 'we will not be looking to do those things' signalling the SC and GOP that no tough actions are coming NOW, so they can stay the course with consideration for comprise.

Is that accidental? Was it accidental when Biden told the donors 'don't worry, you will not see any real change' when it came to implementation of his agenda and it getting skewered from within?

I think there has to be a real naivety, to see time and again Biden and the Dem's just take a position from the start that they will not use the tools they have to get their agenda done, unless you believe that agenda was never really meant to get done and was just a political football ala Charlie Brown and Lucy.



I think if you gave Biden and the Dem's a switch today and all they had to do was throw the switch and Abortion rights would be protected they absolutely would rationalize some reason not to do it. SOmething like 'it is not democratic'. And as such the Dems will play another very dangerous game when they do not need to simply to try and win votes and with society paying the cost if they lose.

Anyone disagree? If so why?

Not even SCOTUS clerks are immune to the mind-altering destructive effects of social media.

The internet has a fantastic track record of nailing witch hunts on the first try, too.

I agree with this. Even the evolution of my thoughts on who’d have done this was the same.

I think just more generally a lot of people could have seen the document and had opportunities to leak. For all we know, someone was accidentally CCed.

I was hoping you would weigh in. I hadn't thought about accidental CCs. That's a possibility, although you would be opening yourself up to a lot of attention if you received a draft accidentally and then gave it to the press. If that's what happened, I assume we will know very soon. The most obvious step in an investigation would be to check whether the draft was sent from a government email account to someone who shouldn't have received it.

I have never talked to a former clerk about security protocols at the Court. Do you know if clerks and justices are allowed to access work email remotely? I imagine that there must be some form of remote access in this day and age. I also don't know how paranoid the Court is about keeping written drafts secure. In other words, if a clerk or justice left a draft in a conference room and it was picked up by the cleaning staff, I don' know whether that would be a huge breach of protocol.

I suspect that the justices and their clerks have some amount of secretarial and/or word processing assistance. Those people could have had access to a draft as well.

I just can't imagine not being able to access email remotely nowadays.

I knew ex-SCOTUS clerks writing draft opinions in the library when I was in law school like 5 years ago.

So while I don't know for sure what their security protocols are, I strongly suspect they relied heavily on honor.

This isn't unique to SCOTUS. Even at actual internet security companies, they'll tell you inside jobs and social engineering attacks are best prevented by "culture" and education.

Based on this video, Krystal Ball seems like an idiot.

If the protocols are that loose, then the chances that the leak was accidental are probably higher than I imagined. That said, SCOTUS opinions never get leaked. It would be quite a coincidence if lightning just happened to strike in a case where the Court was overruling Roe.

I agree that it seems inconceivable that justices and clerks would be unable to access email remotely, especially in the COVID era.

absolutely

Always the artful dodger.

You were given examples of why your religion (as seen by some) might be considered murderous and immoral. You just crossed your arms and said
"no, you".

God does, indeed, according to The Bible do some things that would be considered murderous and immoral if humans did them.

Is that a statement that you would agree with or is it merely gibberish ?

Is is wrong that makes her even more attractive to me ?

Only you can make that call.

To be honest it just seems like a way for the Dems to whip up the base and get their poor sheep to vote for the lesser evil this year. I don't know why all the pearl clutching couldn't wait until June though. But they had all the talking points lined up.

I think your opinion on right wing leaks is interesting but I honestly can't see the three justices who were paid with lifetime positions to make this exact ruling would jump ship when the time came.

I think I'm leaning on a breach of protocol of some sort as the most boring but likely scenario.

Nothing artful about it.
He's a broken record with his standard reply.

Spare us the self-righteous act sinner

The history of the court is littered with justices who disappointed the appointing party. I feel comfortable in saying that almost no justices gaf about pleasing the appointing party after they are sworn in. That's the inevitable (and theoretically desirable) consequence of lifetime appointments.

That's why the new goal is to appoint justices who are arch conservatives in their hearts, both politically and judicially. Never again will you see a Republican administration guess at a nominee's conservative bona fides like H.W. did with David Souter. When Republicans control the WH and the Senate, you are guaranteed to see nominees like Neil Gorsuch and Barrett.

...You do knnow there's pro choice Christians, right?

If you think the great flood was "good", I take it you approve of the murder of George Tiller? Seeing as he "slaughtered unborn babies."?

If ever there was an invitation for a "no true Scotsman" reply, this is it.

Wow is she dumb.

Without completely knowing the protocols of the court, I can't imagine the liberal judge or staff would be leaking a first draft opinion by the majority. First, as I remember, the drafts don't get circulated among all the justices but only those justices voting with the majority (unless they are trying to sway votes). Given how inflammatory ailto's language seems, I would expect some of the majority to want softer language, especially because they are outright rejecting precedent and his reasoning seems very weak. Second, assuming there has been negotiations on the language and reasoning, what is the point of leaking the February draft and not a current version draft.

Where I see value to the leak is keeping the majority members in line. If one of the majority judges changes their mind on overturning Roe, this leak denies them any cover. Ailto's draft is right out of the minds of the conservative anti-abortion think tanks, probably just copied from the amicus briefs.

Of course, I predicted upthread that the court would not overturn RvW, just move up viability or the point of state interest, so wdik.

Among the somewhat nasty ulterior motives people are speculating about for the leaker, I don't see the simple one that he or she sees flaws in the arguments and hopes that they can be pointed out by people smart and influential enough that a justice will be swayed before the final decision is given. Guess that's asking too much.

Could have saved yourself the time just by looking at the pseudonym of choice.

I really can’t imagine a clerk or a judge doing it. As you said, it’s like 95 percent chance to be career suicide for people who really really care about their career.

My moneys on random employee who got a copy somehow and doesn’t even have a definite reason for doing it.