Because they KNOW they were guilty then, and need to make it quietly go away. Here, they’re not yet sure who’s guilty, and it may likely be no crime anyway. So commence chest pounding!
But all they’ll talk about is that there was a leak, nevermind what the leak said.
I think it’s laughable that THIS TIME Republicans are up in arms that the rules of decorum have been broken. Pathetic.
I note that the legal professionals here have been unanimous in their view that this sort of breach of confidentiality is taken very seriously in the profession. As a non-lawyer, I defer to your views on the matter. I’m persuaded that I underestimated the importance of the principle of confidentiality.
However, I still think there may be a potential counterpoint to this, not from the normal perspective of law practice, but simply from a human psychology perspective. This person, if discovered, would be famous (or, in the eyes of others, infamous). Perhaps there are some liberal law firms that would see him, not as someone who breached court confidentiality, but more as a whistleblower trying to fight a grievous injustice. Just a thought. I could well be wrong.
It’s hard to work for a law firm when you’re disbarred.
I mean, maybe they escape that, but I would hope not. Keeping confidences is absolutely fundamental, not only to the profession, but to our entire adversarial system of justice.
This is something nonlawyers can get confused about when they think about their understanding of “ethics.” Like, an ethical person does something that’s against the rules when their conscience so dictates right?
But you cannot be in the legal profession if you can’t fulfill your role in the system, even when your conscience would dictate otherwise. Or, put another way, you have to be able to follow your conscience in not breaking our legal system rather than your conscience in an individual case.
I don’t think so. It’s not like the leak is actually going to prevent the decision from coming (if that was where we were headed, and I’m guessing we were). So, this whistle blower violated a very important professional obligation, and did so for no apparent benefit. I’m as pro-choice as they come, but I wouldn’t hire this person.
That said, there are certainly things worth violating confidentiality about. If a clerk learned a justice was being paid off, well then you have a true whistle blower. We had some hypothetical in law school designed to put you in the position of being unable to breach confidentiality even when necessary to prevent some grave harm (I don’t remember the details) but I do remember thinking, “well I guess I’d get disbarred, but there’s no way I’m not going public with that.”
This current breach doesn’t accomplish anything that I can see. At least not on the pro-choice side of the equation.
No law firm would hire someone they know for sure would leak internal documents ‘for the greater good’ as that individual perceived it.
There are, however, still ambulances to chase.
One thing the leak does is prepare the USA for the looming inevitability of Roe being overturned… rather than being suddenly announced in a supreme court decision, and people being “surprised” and “shocked” and “saddened”, nobody can say they were surprised at this point: they literally saw it coming.
Whoever leaked it, they accomplished that at least. We can’t say we didn’t see it coming. It’s coming. We just have advance warning now.
What we do with that advance warning, I have no idea, but we have advance warning… so perhaps whoever leaked it, just wanted the USA to have a 4-6 week heads up before Roe went into the dustbin of history?
I would be shocked to learn there are any serious issues. Cyber security is one the the government’s top priorities with all of the hostile actors, both state sponsored and private groups, out to infiltrate our networks and steal information.
I’m sure the IT guys have it buttoned up pretty good from the outside. But I bet a justice who has been there since, say 1991, has people print out a bunch of stuff for him, brings it back and forth from home, and loses track of it all the time. It’s not like this document was classified material or anything.
Someone who can’t be fired is difficult to incentivize to follow document control policies.
NVM, I guess you already answered my question above.
ETAETA: or at least @Procrustus did.
Well, I think the law clerks are the very least likely to have leaked. They are ambitious young lawyers with promising careers, and being associated with a leak like this would completely destroy that. They could never practice law again. There are certain violations of professional standards that you just can’t recover from, and this is one.
I still think the justices are the most likely, because they literally have nothing to lose.
But non-legal staff seem possible. I bet a lot of the people who work in the Supreme Court take an interest in legal matters. And a custodian who leaked this would never work for a law firm again, but they could probably get hired by a retail store or something, as well as pick up some fame and fortune from the book.
I saw what was here before you edited, and I don’t think I have answered it. I don’t think a law clerk has any obligation to keep a justice’s commission of a crime a secret.
Someone pointed out that a book deal and speaking fees on MSNBC would be a pittance to what a clerk is throwing away with their career.
But a janitor? I think they could get quite the step up. Assuming they didn’t actually break any laws, anyway.
Oh, yeah. I’m sure there are things that would be okay to violate confidentiality for, either because “my boss is stealing” isn’t protected information or because “blowing the whistle will prevent this awful thing”. But there is nothing illegal about this opinion, and the link between leaking it and any important outcome seems far too uncertain to justify the action.
I think you are agreeing with me?
I certainly concur that, if outed, such a person would become both famous and infamous, depending on one’s POV. But I don’t get the bit about a book deal. What would the book be about? Here, let me write the book – it’s not very long:
I was appalled by the forthcoming decision to overturn Roe. I saw a copy of the draft opinion on the desk of Justice “x”. Late at night, I borrowed it and ran it through the Xerox machine, and gave the copy to Politico.
The end.
Or is it possible that political bestsellers these days are driven by much more mundane considerations than I had ever imagined? 
ETA: In fairness, as an afterthought, the book might well be about the intrigues that go on behind the closed doors of SCOTUS. That could actually be interesting, if said author was indeed privy to such things.
Well, except you have to be able to trust your colleagues to follow the rules that benefit you all. Again, it’s unthinkable to do this for anyone in the legal profession, and no one has more to lose than the justices if that falls apart.
I mean, if I were a justice and a colleague did that, if I wanted the colleague’s vote on an opinion, I’d only give them a paper copy to read, and only for the time it took to read it. I mean, in reality, the court can’t function if they can’t circulate opinions and ideas. That’s a big part of the process, and it would be impossible to do essentially in public.
More or less. It’s all speculative. It coulda been Harvey, the 6 foot invisible rabbit.
At this point, just weighing who has the most to benefit and least to lose.
That’s why you aren’t a ghost writer.
Why wouldn’t someone who is strongly pro-choice not want to read about the story of the brave custodian who risked everything in order to bring this information out into the light?
Obviously this person has reasons, a history, on why they made this call, and I’m sure that there would be those interested in learning it.
Or they just buy the book and put it on their coffee table along with the rest of the progressive collection to impress their friends.
I’ll wait for the graphic novel version.