Distrust among Supreme Court justices has not faded since the leak of the controversial Dobbs ruling a year ago that opened the door to banning abortion, as ethical scandals have further created new tensions reports Politico.
According to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, the leak of the draft majority ruling written by Justice Sam Alito created a firestorm within the confines of the court and even Chief Justice John Roberts admitted that a great deal of comity was lost in the aftermath.
As Gerstein wrote, “Over the past 13 months, the court has been hit by a series of challenges, both internal and external, that have rocked the institution itself, undermined relationships on the bench and fundamentally altered the way it is viewed by the public and treated by the media.”
As part of the fall-out, fractures have appeared among the court’s six conservatives who have taken to sniping at each other in their writings.
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“Even the six conservative justices have suffered turmoil in the post-Dobbs world. They have found it difficult to reach agreement both on legal rulings and on the ethics scandals that have emerged mostly from their own ranks. They have even squabbled over how to apply the ascendant interpretive method that seemed to unite them last June: originalism,” Gerstien is reporting before adding, “Some of the longtime observers, looking back on a term that was nearing its end, could only wonder: Can a fractured court put the pieces back together again?”
According to Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, “You’re in this room with the same eight other people pretty much forever. They do need to get back to a point where they can trust each other.”
Justice Clarence Thomas admitted the distrust is pervasive in a speech after the Dobbs leak, telling the audience, “Now, that trust … is gone forever. When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. … It’s like, kind of, an infidelity, that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it.”
As for ethical problems dogging the court, the report states, “The justices themselves, meanwhile, seemed unable to agree on just how far they should go to assuage the public by disclosing more information about gifts, family income and conflicts of interest.”
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Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States