Alito says he knows who leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade
by Susan Ferrechio · The Washington TimesJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr. says he has a pretty good idea who was behind the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion he wrote that overturned the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion.
“I do have an opinion,” Justice Alito said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court or me to say this was the person responsible.”
Mystery still surrounds the 2022 leak of a draft of the high court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The ruling threw out the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, and when it was leaked to Politico, protests erupted, some of them outside the justices’ homes.
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No one has been publicly named or disciplined over the leak. An internal investigation was unable to gather enough evidence to identify the culprit.
Justice Alito, 76, made the Sunday talk show rounds ahead of the release of his new book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country” (Basic Liberty), which will be released Tuesday. Amid reports that he is weighing retirement, he said he considers doing so each year but has no immediate plans to step aside.
He told “Fox News Sunday” that he is worried the court could be altered by Democrats who are proposing packing the court with additional justices or imposing term limits.
“There has been a concerted effort to intimidate the court and justices on the court to try to influence us to decide cases differently from the way in which we have been deciding them,” said Justice Alito, a George W. Bush appointee. “And I am concerned about the future of the court. I think it’s an important institution. It has not always done the right thing, but I think on the whole, it has been fundamental in protecting our constitutional structure and the rights that all Americans enjoy.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” he said he lost friends over the Dobbs decision, which allows states to regulate abortion laws.
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He said politicians criticizing the court is “quite damaging,” and named former President Joseph R. Biden and President Trump as culprits.
“There’s been a great change in what presidents have said about the court when they are unhappy about our decisions,” Justice Alito said. “We are not part of any political movement and we are not attempting to further any political agenda.”
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Susan Ferrechio
sferrechio@washingtontimes.com
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