“Far and away most likely impact of the leaked draft is that it locks in 5 votes for this opinion, essentially without edits. One argument for the conservative self-leak theory came from former clerk Amy Kapczynski, who opined that the leak would distract from “how devastating the reversal of Roe will be to the credibility of the Court.” In a Twitter thread, she speculated that the leak was an effort to lock in this version - Justice Alito’s version - for all five conservative justices, who would have to vote that way or be seen as caving to political pressures. In fact, there’s a groundswell of opinion that the leak was designed to prevent justices from changing their mind in voting to strike down Roe. Kevin McCarthy of California, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Elise Stefanik of New York called the disclosure a “coordinated campaign to intimidate and obstruct the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, and its independence in our political system, from upholding the Constitution.”īut outside of Republican circles, there has been reason to believe that the leaker is not a liberal who is aghast at not only the loss of abortion rights, but also the Court’s insistence that other rulings - ones that grant the right to gay marriage, prevent anti-sodomy laws from being used against consenting adults, and prohibit states from outlawing birth control - could follow suit. House Republican leadership also weighed in, as Reps. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, would be a violation of the separation of powers. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, who said the leaker was a “misguided zealot.” Kennedy wanted the FBI to conduct an investigation, which, according to Democratic Sen. McConnell was echoed in his condemnation by Sen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the leading Republican - who did not allow a vote to confirm former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, and then ensured Amy Coney Barrett would be confirmed just one month after her nomination by former President Donald Trump - called the leak an “attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” He blamed the “radical left” as the culprits, calling the leak an effort to “bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law.” Immediately after the draft was published, SCOTUSBlog, which covers the Supreme Court, called the leak - not the actual ruling it foreshadowed - “the gravest, most unforgivable sin” for the court.Īnd on Tuesday, as the Supreme Court confirmed that the draft was authentic but did not represent justices’ final positions on the matter, Republicans were focused on determining who it was that told Politico - and in, turn, the world - that the court would overturn Roe just a few weeks before actually issuing a decision.