It's been one year since a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, prompting the conservative judges on the high court to warn that the breach risked wrecking public trust in the institution. Such warnings turned out to be half true; confidence in the Supreme Court indeed plunged to a historic low around Roe's fall, and the court continues to be plagued by scandal. But any damage to the Supreme Court, as my colleague Pema Levy documents today, has had little to do with leaks. In fact, in the year since the draft opinion emerged online, most of the court's scandals have stemmed from ongoing revelations pointing to troubling financial entanglements directly involving conservative justices. The most notable, of course, has engulfed the shady dealings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who, as Pema reminds us, had once complained that the Supreme Court might not survive what he saw as continued attacks against the high court. The list of scandals is genuinely staggering to read. I can't help but think about it in the context of Justice Samuel Alito's recent self-serving interview with the Wall Street Journal, in which he irresponsibly claimed to know the identity of the leaker, but declined to name names, and appeared to mock the abortion pill. As I wrote this weekend, Alito sounded very much like a man auditioning to replace Tucker Carlson's perch at Fox News. Ghouls, all of 'em. —Inae Oh |
No comments:
Post a Comment