All things SCOTUS

In light of this recent leak, I thought this thread would be needed.

Prescient…

Gilead, here we come!

I don't have a lot of hope about what the next 10-15 years are going to look like, politically and culturally, for the United States. We're essentially two countries at this point, with the suburbs being not so much Switzerland between them but buffers of neoliberals and neoconservatives.

More at the link:

https://twitter.com/akapczynski/status/1521494553877962754

I clerked at the Supreme Court. Last night, I assumed a liberal clerk leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe. Now I think MUCH more likely it was leaked by a conservative fanatically committed to every word of Alito’s monstrous opinion. "

Timing: This draft was circulated in Feb. If a liberal was mad about it, why wait until April to send it to Politico? The op will be out in June. What are the benefits of releasing it early? And a BIG downside – the focus on the leak itself instead of the opinion.

If you work inside the Court, you know that the most concrete impact of the leak is to lock in this opinion essentially as is. Any edits at this point reveal jockeying between Justices, undermine the majority, and Court itself. Embarassing to the majority.

Liberals have lived for years trying to eke out a sentence here or there in SCOTUS opinions to make these conservative decisions less terrible. Why leak something and undermine that whole strategy?

Far and away most likely impact of the leaked draft is that it locks in 5 votes for this opinion, essentially without edits. Who would want that? So: This is about as extreme an opinion as you can have overturning Roe.

It talks about fetuses being people as a matter of ancient law (teeing up idea that fetuses are constitutionally PROTECTED – no abortion anywhere as matter of conlaw.) And its arguments undermine all of SCOTUS’s gay rights and contraception decisions. wrote:

Destroying the credibility of the judicial branch has been a long term goal of the avaricious and authoritarian loving theocratic members of the GOP for decades and doing ANYTHING to further this goal will be looked upon as a necessity so the argument that this leaked draft came from a 'conservative' is highly probable. This cult is willing to do anything to further their retrograde policies up to and committing career suicide if it means 'winning'.