Supreme Court Leak Prompts New Look at Old Way of Doing Business
The leak of a bombshell draft abortion opinion has left the U.S. Supreme Court confronting whether to make radical changes to its tradition-laced work habits.
Companies fight document leaks by taking steps such as placing identifiable marks on paper, disabling laptop USB ports and checking employee thumb drives. But the uniquely small and secretive high court has, until now, been able to keep draft opinions from real-time public scrutiny without using a full array of high-tech tools.
The court has always relied on being able to trust the small group of people who have access to inside information, said Kermit Roosevelt, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Once that trust is broken, there s no easy replacement or way back.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it now seems it would have been a good idea for Ch. J. Roberts to modernize the Court’s security before now.