Judge Jackson Won’t Say Dobbs Leak Is Wrong and Won’t Object to Protests at Her Soon-to-Be Colleagues’ Homes Andrew McCarthy
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court after the current term ends in a few weeks, sat for an interview by the Washington Post. She was asked about the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case, and the consequent demonstrations at the homes of several justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as conservative justices identified in media reporting as having voted with Alito to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the interview:
Q: What was your response when you when you saw the draft leak [of a Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade]?
A: Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.
Q: Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing?
A: I can’t answer that.
Q: What do you think about peaceful protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes?
A: I don’t have any comment.
This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law.
The progressive justices, in particular, could do their institution a great service by rebuking the leak and the illegal actions patently intended to intimidate justices, regardless of vehement disagreements they may have with the draft (which, of course, remains a mere draft for discussion purposes, not a binding opinion of the Court). But they are AWOL and thus, like the Biden administration, tacitly approving of, or at least indulgent of, the scare tactics against the Court and its members. Or maybe they figure, not irrationally, that if they said the right things, they’d have the “peaceful protesters” on their front lawns next.
It would have been understandable if Judge Jackson had said she’d agreed to speak to the Post about the jurists who had influenced and inspired her (the main subject of the interview), but that she would not discuss the Dobbs leak at all. Had she done that, she could not be fairly accused of vaguely endorsing the leak and the demonstrations at justices’ homes.
But that is not what she did. She first expressed shock over the leak, so it was clearly a topic she was willing to weigh in on. But then she refused to say whether she thought the leak — which the chief justice and Justice Clarence Thomas (the senior justice on the Court) have full-throatedly condemned — was a good or bad thing. And then she could not bring herself to say that people should not protest at the homes of justices — something even Judiciary chairman Dick Durbin, one of the Senate’s most partisan and influential Democrats (and the one who steered Jackson through her confirmation hearing), has admirably described as “reprehensible.”
Justice Thomas has opined in recent public statements that the leak has changed the Court “fundamentally” and irretrievably, betraying trust. In contrasting the current Supreme Court with how it was at the turn of the century, he ruefully observed, “This is not the court of that era. . . . We actually trusted each other. We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family.”
Not anymore.
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