is going to be held accountable for the Dobbs leak. No one. And thus, future leaks are almost guaranteed. THIS is how you get more leaks. It also destroys the Justices’ ability to debate, to “mull things over, with their colleagues. It strongly divides the court even more, fundamentally turning it into a mini legislature who wears black robes.
What this tells me is that it almost for sure was an Associate Justice who did this, or at least was brazenly culpable. A clerk acting entirely on his or her own would have been quickly thrown under the bus.
Also, if a Justice was involved, we know it was likely a Leftist Juror. A Conservative would have been likely to have been exposed.
In fact, I think that this is the likely scenario: Sotomayor probably did it. She was in cahoots with on of her clerks. But to run this clerk down is necessarily to finger Sotomayor, and Roberts is simply unwilling to put the court and the nation through that.
So he is faced with destroying the culture of the court or facing public upheaval. He chose the former. And it was very probably the biggest decision he will EVER make in his life.
So no one faces any public repercussions. The court’s official response?
“The Court has no comment.”