{"id":1570,"date":"2012-07-09T19:51:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T23:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","slug":"scotus-leaks-are-rare-but-not-unprecedented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/07\/09\/scotus-leaks-are-rare-but-not-unprecedented\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS leaks are rare but not unprecedented"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jonathan Peters
\n<\/em>This is the front end of a Slate essay I published. Follow me@jonathanwpeters<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>on Twitter.<\/p>\n

<\/em>The Supreme Court isn\u2019t supposed to be like other institutions. It\u2019s supposed to be something more, a place above partisan squabbling, insulated from the unseemly back and forth of politics. The court\u2019s nine justices are the final arbiters of our biggest legal questions, and much of their work is supposed to be done behind closed doors. They hold oral arguments and release decisions\u2014and remain a mystery to most people.
\n
\nThat\u2019s what made CBS\u2019s Jan Crawford\u2019s\u00a0story on July 1\u00a0so shocking.\u00a0Crawford reported that Chief Justice John Roberts voted to strike down the heart of the Affordable Care Act before changing his mind and siding with the court\u2019s liberal bloc. Her story cited \u201ctwo sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations\u201d among the justices, and it noted that Roberts\u2019 \u201cswitch\u201d was \u201cknown among law clerks, chambers\u2019 aides and secretaries.<\/p>\n

The collective reaction of pundits and legal commentators seemed to be, gasp, \u201cHow could this happen? How could the Supreme Court leak?\u201d Harvard Law School\u2019s Jack Goldsmith\u00a0had just argued\u00a0that the court is typically \u201cbetter at stopping leaks\u201d than other government institutions.\u00a0Time<\/em>\u2019s Adam Sorensen\u00a0described\u00a0Crawford\u2019s story as a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime scoop.\u201d Robert Shrum, like many others,\u00a0described\u00a0the leak as \u201cunprecedented.\u201d Meanwhile, Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University,\u00a0wrote\u00a0on the legal blog\u00a0The Volokh Conspiracy<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cthe leak is pretty incredible\u201d and that he \u201ccan\u2019t remember anything quite like\u201d it.<\/p>\n

No doubt the leak is incredible, and no doubt the justices are good at keeping secrets. But there is nothing unprecedented about the Supreme Court dishing on what happens behind the red curtain. The court has a long and colorful history of leaks that dates back to the mid-19th<\/sup>\u00a0century.<\/p>\n

For more, go here (Slate).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jonathan Peters This is the front end of a Slate essay I published. Follow me@jonathanwpeters\u00a0on Twitter. The Supreme Court isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}