We should hesitate to treat the leaked Supreme Court opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, as likely to resemble the final opinion of the Court. It is over three months old. The opinion’s length, an exhaustive 98 pages; its direct language — “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled”; and its long recounting of the historic opinions of previous courts on the matter of abortion — which amount to a kind of shadow opinion on abortion’s essential barbarity — suggest to me that Alito was tasked with writing an “everything and the kitchen sink” draft that would be edited and reduced by colleagues who are not as resolute in these convictions as Alito.
The fact of the leaked draft is a real institutional danger to the functioning of the Supreme Court itself, which is regrettable. But, even if this opinion is substantially cut down, diminished, or disfigured by his colleagues, I’m glad that we have a record of its existence and can read it for generations hence.
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