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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

The leak could have been done by someone who favors the draft.

That is extremely unlikely. There's nothing to be gained by breaking the trust of the supreme court justices by leaking a draft of a decision you are in favor of.

Now, the justices will be facing intense public discontent from those who want a different decision to be made before the draft is finalized (not that I suspect anything can realistically be changed at this point).

If you favor the decision, then it also speaks to money not getting a significant motivating factor (taking money to leak would betray someone they are supporting, which seems less than likely).

By this line of reasoning, I am assuming it was done by someone who deeply opposes the result.

> There's nothing to be gained by breaking the trust of the supreme court justices by leaking a draft of a decision you are in favor of.

Yes, there is. You potentially lock in someone who’s been waffling on their final vote by making their initial vote public.

That could just as easily, if not more certainly, backfire.

It could make the discussion about the leak, not the decision. It could soften the criticism of the decision itself.

Seems to be working quite well, I'd say a success overall.

I doubt it's a success. Outside the HN bubble, the overturning itself is the main subject of discussion in places like reddit. In fact, if you take a quick look at the HN "new" queue, you'll see plenty of flagged/dead submissions that directly mention the decision but this one is the only one that gets through because HN disdains mainstream partisan topics like abortion.

Releasing a draft stops many avenues of compromise among the decision makers. Regardless of the industry/institution.

When members do not have a way to change their opinion and save face, they won't change their opinion.

Politico should have been more thoughtful about its disclosure if they preferred to see changes because now the names on that opinion will never change and we could very well see the exact language become the published opinion.

US Supreme justices are appointed for life, the only "face" they have to lose realistically is their legacy reputation, how they are seen by future generations. They are not really vulnerable to populist attacks of hypocrisy or flip-flopping or whatever.

> They are not really vulnerable to populist attacks of hypocrisy or flip-flopping or whatever.

They are humans that have to live in society just like the rest of us. No one is completely invulnerable to society. I imagine being the target of some of these radical abortion groups (anti or pro) would be scary, especially for officials that are normally not in the limelight.

Tell me more about these radical pro-abortion groups of which you speak. I’d really love to know if there’s an equivalent to the violent murderers on the right wing.

Last estimate I'd heard of abortions since Roe v. Wade is 60 million. I haven't a clue how accurate it is, but let's use it as an example.

Pro-life / anti-abortion people believe that a fetus is a unique human life; from their perspective, that's 60 million murders committed against the unborn.

Of course, for any who do not think a fetus is a living human, it is a hollow argument.

>I imagine being the target of some of these radical abortion groups (anti or pro) would be scary, especially for officials that are normally not in the limelight.

These are federal supreme court justices that rule on often (by the nature of the cases they receive) controversial topics constantly. It's not a position you take if you value privacy.

I'm sure now it's especially dangerous, but I don't think this is a novel factor in their life at this point.

That’s incredibly unrealistic in this case. All the conservatives could die satisified the day after this decision is final. They’d have served their ultimate purpose to the cause to which they dedicated their entire lives. This is the one thing they were put on the court to do.

No we still need them to overturn some of the ridiculous gun laws in places like NYC.

Unlikely. The more obvious intent is to provide a tool to campaign on for the next several months and boost the sagging approval of the president. Something to rally around.

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