<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1663076622029,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000177-1b39-d2c7-af7f-5fbf13ff0004","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1663076622029,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000177-1b39-d2c7-af7f-5fbf13ff0004","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_63076609", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1094187"} }); ","_id":"00000183-3717-d39e-a1bf-b7f756cd0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedSupreme Court Justice Elena Kagan called the leaking of the draft abortion opinion “horrible” and signaled there will be an update by the end of the month on the high court’s efforts to track down the leaker.
In brief comments about the leak investigation on Monday, Kagan, 62, said she suspected none of her colleagues were privy to the efforts of the leak investigation “except for the chief justice, maybe, about what the investigation has turned up, if anything,” referring to Chief Justice John Roberts calling on the Supreme Court marshal to look into the origins of the leaked draft opinion in a statement on May 3.
The associate justice made her remarks during a discussion at Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center with Judge Alison Nathan, a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
Kagan was one of three Democratic-appointed justices on the high court to vote against overturning Roe v. Wade in the 6-3 decision under Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which upheld Mississippi‘s restrictive abortion law and ultimately allowed states to create near-total abortion laws. She contended the May 2 leak to Politico, which revealed the court was poised to overturn 49 years of abortion precedent, makes the justices’ jobs more difficult “when you might wake up tomorrow morning and there’s an opinion on the front page of the newspapers.”
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If the Supreme Court’s investigators have “not figured out who the perpetrator was,” Kagan said, another serious dilemma is how the court can prevent the same thing from occurring once again.
During her discussion, Kagan spoke on the public’s views of the court’s legitimacy at a time in which polling suggests that just 48% of the nation has a favorable view of the high court, which is similar to the perception of the high court following the 2015 ruling over Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage.
“Judges create legitimacy problems for themselves … when they instead stray into places where it looks like they’re an extension of the political process or when they’re imposing their own personal preferences,” Kagan said.
Her view somewhat contrasted Roberts’s latest comments on the same subject of the court’s perceived legitimacy. “Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court,” Roberts said Friday at the 10th Circuit Bench & Bar Conference at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado.
It was at the same Colorado-based conference that Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed his “hope” on Thursday that an update to the Supreme Court’s leak investigation would be forthcoming.
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In the summer months that followed the leak, Republican-appointed justices who voted to overturn Roe experienced heightened security concerns at their homes from pro-abortion rights protesters, coupled with a very real threat made against Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June, when a 26-year-old man came to his Maryland home armed with the intent to kill the justice, according to statements he made in a 911 call.
The Washington Examiner contacted the Supreme Court Public Information Office for a comment.
