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> I believe it’s much more likely that the leaker is someone who supports the opinion rather than an oppo­nent > If [the majority bloc in favor of the opinion

• deleted 5y ago
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• drewcoo 5y ago
  It's not about reasoning. It's about excuses for partisan squabbling.
• philosopher1234 5y ago
  This models the leaker as unsophisticated/naive. It’s not clear to me that’s warranted given they were likely part of the Supreme Court staff. The actual effect of leaking this as opposed to waiting for it to be announced seems beneficial for supporters of the decision not detractors.
  • Terry_Roll 5y ago
    The actions after the leak, like the barricades going up I think was more telling. The intelligence was good enough to prompt a knee jerk reaction to protect the building, yet the intelligence is not good enough to find the leaker. Something doesnt add up!
    • nl 5y ago
      That makes no sense. Anyone can predict that this could prompt protests. It's a no-brainer to put up barricades.
    • zerocrates 5y ago
      It doesn't take much intelligence, under any definition, to know that once this leaked there would be protests.
    • 650REDHAIR 5y ago
      I read there were barricades before because the person lit themselves on fire recently.
    • tick_tock_tick 5y ago
      > Something doesnt add up! Like your timeline. Please at-least get that right before you go spreading lies. The barricades got setup before this leak in response to the guy lighting himself on fire.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • gfodor 5y ago
    It seems highly unlikely anyone who leaked this was part of the core of the institution of the Supreme Court. Selection bias kind of leads to an assumption that those who work for the court support the neutrality and processes of the court, and have much to lose from this action vs possibly marginal potential upside. Much more likely is this was either a low level or external actor imo.
    • anothernewdude 5y ago
      > Selection bias kind of leads to an assumption that those who work for the court support the neutrality and processes of the court Certainly hasn't been true for those who make up the court. It's one of the least legitimate legal courts in the land.
      • formerkrogemp 5y ago
        > Certainly hasn't been true for those who make up the court. It's one of the least legitimate legal courts in the land. It certainly seems comprised of partisan hacks these days. I see no other way to describe the recent appointments prior to this year. They certainly weren't endorsed by the American Bar Association.
        • rayiner 5y ago
          They ABA doesn’t “endorse” any appointees. They rate them, and Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett all received ratings of “well qualified” which is the ABA’s highest rating. These three were completely obvious Republican picks a decade ago when I was in law school. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were so-called “feeder” judges on the courts of appeals, meaning they were well regarded and sent many of their clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court. (Just like RBG and Breyer and Garland). And Barrett was a star law professor.
    • LordDragonfang 5y ago
      >Selection bias kind of leads to an assumption that those who work for the court support the neutrality and processes of the court That may be true, but a key issue with this reasoning is that there has been an increasing opinion that the move to overturn Roe v Wade is an explicitly partisan affair precipitated by bad-faith manipulations of recent SC appointments from the conservative side.
  • grapeskin 5y ago
    > This models the leaker as unsophisticated/naive. It’s not clear to me that’s warranted given they were likely part of the Supreme Court staff. One thing I’ve learned the past few years is that we’ve all greatly overestimated the people in governments. I’m not sure if it’s because of movies or what that influenced that. The reality is that people are, for the most part, as dumb as anyone else. It’s just that the people are generally more private (often because it’s legally compelled) so we don’t see all the mistakes as obviously as we do in other fields. America is also going through a wave of activism on all fronts, so being naive or unsophisticated isn’t really relevant to that.
  • 8note 5y ago
    What skills transfer from working at the supreme court transfer to effective leaking? I could see relevant skills to nursing at a nursing home?
  • dillondoyle 5y ago
    Yup. The closer to the election this is announced the more impact it will have. We will surely get another wave but outrage goes away quick with short attention spans. What if this leak did not come from within? What about the possibility of a certain country with a history of hacking institutions and using that information to create division at key moments? Seems like an obvious play. I have no evidence of this and the simple answer is more likely. Was my initial thought though; Because working in politics myself, this doesn't seem optimal for either side imho.
• not2b 5y ago
  The issue is that the decision was not final; Chief Justice Roberts was still trying to persuade other justices to adopt a split-the-difference decision (uphold the 15-week law but don't kill Roe v Wade). Justices have switched sides before. Leaking it could kill any quiet negotiations. There was a second leak after the first one about this (about Roberts' position). So someone on the hard-line anti-abortion side had a motivation to do the leak.
  • hooande 5y ago
    They would have to be very convinced that someone was going to flip. And even then there's a good chance that the wavering Justice would see this as a ploy the same as you do, and take offense.
    • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > would have to be very convinced that someone was going to flip The only element making me question the amateurishness of this leak is its timing, on the eve of bellwether primaries.
  • masklinn 5y ago
    > The issue is that the decision was not final Wasn't it? From the descriptions I've seen of the process, the decision draft starts circulating once the decision has been taken. The language can be softened or hardened, but from what I understand here Roe would be dead regardless. I'd think the possible changes would have been with respect to the "blast radius" aka the references to (and explicit targeting of) Obergefell, Lawrence, Eisenstadt.
    • aw1621107 5y ago
      As far as I know the decision isn't necessarily final after the initial vote following arguments. A prominent example of this is National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, where Chief Justice Roberts was reported to have initially voted to strike down individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), but later changed his mind.
• SllX 5y ago
  Sarah Isgur and David French of The Dispatch ran through basically all of the possibilities and basically came to the conclusion it could be anyone but most likely it was just a stupid young clerk that never had a real job (University to Law School to probably at least two clerkships before a SCOTUS clerkship) trying to play politics and not having a strategy, or at least a good strategy for what they might accomplish here. Theoretically this benefits Republicans, conservatives and the religious right more by dropping this bomb early, but that’s just speculation about future possibilities and we’re talking about judicial clerks, not political operatives. Given that applies to mostly if not all of the clerks under any of the Justices, all you’re really doing is reading soggy tea leaves. Sarah also pointed out that the Chief Justice has, technically, firing power over all of the clerks under any of the Justices, and there’s maybe a case to be made for him exercising that power here to fire all of them if they cannot definitively prove who it was after investigation in order to defend the integrity of the Court’s deliberation process. If they can at least narrow down that it was in fact a clerk and not some other staffer and definitely not a Justice (probably wasn’t, but still better to go through the investigation), then I can’t say I would disagree with that outcome.
  • verve_rat 5y ago
    Maybe, but while the intention wouldn't be to punish these people, the outcome would amount to collective punishment. Collective punishment is bad, like so bad it is a war crime, if done during a war.
    • SllX 5y ago
      It’s the loss of a job with the nearly guaranteed promise of a new one. The hiring bonus for a former SCOTUS clerk presently going into a private firm is >$400K. It would be a terrible outcome to be sure, but we are a long ways away from what you can even think to call a war crime and the integrity of the Court is vastly more important to me than the integrity of the jobs of its staff. By the way, the June-July recess is about when clerkships turnover and they choose to stay on for another term (at the Justice’s discretion) or move on in their careers. Clerkships aren’t forever.
• giarc 5y ago
  The argument I heard elsewhere is that the draft was circulated a few months ago and therefore if they were against the decision, they likely would have leaked it then. However, that argument collapses when you consider that it circulated in ~Feb but doesn't mean the leaker had it then.
  • beowulfey 5y ago
    It’s leakers all the way down.
• blueelephanttea 5y ago
  [dead]
• d--b 5y ago
  It's mostly not at all something one can deduce from the PDF. This guy is doing some pretty basic 'forensic' work ('ooh, there were staples') and then jumps to a completely self-made conclusion. It's ridiculous.
  • civilized 5y ago
    It's always annoying when something tries so hard to have the trappings of logical reasoning but is completely lacking in the substance.
  • DantesKite 5y ago
    I found the historical discussion more interesting and thoughtful than the deductions.
• jtc331 5y ago
  > > there’s no reason for a supporter or an opponent to leak an old draft now. It's a big assumption that it's an old draft. It could also be the last draft circulated, and that everything since has been on concurrences or minority opinions.
• bigmattystyles 5y ago
  > I believe it’s much more likely that the leaker is someone who supports the opinion rather than an oppo­nent I only want this to be true and it to be a justice to see how quickly Josh Hawley backs off his threat to impeach said justice. I'm also curious, what kind of source control / collaborative tools do they use inside the supreme court? These decisions look like LaTeX.
• hbosch 5y ago
  There is a similar concept used in commerce, where a product or service is "artificially" overpriced and then discounted to make it seem like the buyer is getting a good deal. In the same way, it makes sense to leak an "extreme" draft and then modify it after the fires have burned a bit, because you still get the benefit of passing unpopular legislation while seeming like you compromised on the details (when perhaps the final outcome is the one you wished for all along). On the other hand, it makes some sense to me in some cynical ways for the opposition to leak this. We've already seen e-mail blasts going out asking for fundraising in the wake of this event, which certainly will solicit funds for numerous PACs and midterm war chests. Still, though, it's not like public opinion often ways heavily on the minds of the court -- they are not elected, after all, and do not face the perils of the election cycle very much. In fact, this puts much, much more pressure on the opposition's comrades in the presidential and congressional seats to come together and act. Pressure which may not be welcome ahead of said midterms...
• reitanqild 5y ago
  Another explanation that I have considered today: Someone really doesn't like that US for once stand united (in support for Ukraine). That someone pulled some strings to leak (or "leak", has it been confirmed yet?) this document. I.O.W. a sign that Gerasimov and his ideas aren't completely dead, yet. (I'm no specialist, this just struck me today as I realized none of the Americans I follow at Twitter care about the ongoing genocide in Europe anymore.)
  • trasz 5y ago
    It would explain why the draft was written in the first place: Russia is known for supporting extremist groups.
• Hizonner 5y ago
  Maybe, but that would be stupid and ineffective. It would be more likely to make them feel like they could not change it. However, I submit that a supporter of the ruling actually has a smart reason to release it early, namely that it's better for them to let any possible backlash calm down before the midterm elections.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• twblalock 5y ago
  The timing makes this more convincing. If the leaker is someone who is outraged by the decision, why didn't they leak it in February when it was first circulated? Why wait until now? Also, keep in mind that the final decision was going to be made public in June, several months before the midterm elections. That's next month -- the outrage was going to happen soon enough. Why jump the gun at such a late date, so close to when the decision was going to be public anyway?
• TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  I lean to this - It was leaked by an opponent, but the timing was in consultation with a political strategist as to timing. Primaries are starting up, and that's why it's now and not earlier or later. This is the perfect time to fire up the base and get them watching primaries and contributing dollars. The leaker may have had idealistic reasons, but the timing feels like it's much more cynical.
• draw_down 5y ago
• Spooky23 5y ago
  Nah. The only one who wins is Alito. It undermines Roberts attempts to be more “moderate”.
• aaron695 5y ago
  > I don't find the reasoning behind this convincing at all. It's a very convincing argument, if you are referring to only this article then try it re-writtern here - https://mobile.twitter.com/akapczynski/status/1521494553877962754 https://mobile.twitter.com/akapczynski/status/15214945538779... Now that anyone can diff the final version it's very hard to change the draft in a lot of ways. The best argument against this theory is that's it's too logical and people are not logical. It took a day for the hive mind to think of this. Pressure and vengeance don't make sense, but nor do people.
• ellisv 5y ago
  The leak presents one side of the argument. It doesn’t make sense for a dissenting Justice to leak the majority opinion and not be able to present their alternative view.
• Natsu 5y ago
  Another line of reasoning in this vein is that one group of politicians is eager to find and prosecute the leaker, the other is not. If they thought it was someone from the other side, they'd probably want a scalp. Also, the conclusion of the article is that there's basically no metadata in this PDF. This article doesn't mention that it was created something like 7 minutes before the Politico story ran. It's going to be pretty hard to work that fact into any scenario where Politico didn't scan a paper document themselves or have someone assist them in doing so as I don't think they wrote the article in 7 minutes.
  • davrosthedalek 4y ago
    Or, you know, set the clock wrongly on purpose. Or just have an incorrectly set clock. Maybe a timezone thing. Maybe a VM.
    • Natsu 4y ago
      Most computers are set up to use NTP automatically and it'd take a heck of a coincidence to get the time 7 minutes before the article was published. If they wanted to fake the time they'd pick something like midnight Jan 1 that gives no info. More likely is that they were waiting for someone to help them scrub the info from it and they hit the publish button on an already prepared article right after they got the file.