At this point the public does not know the name of the leaker who gave Politico a copy of Justice Alito’s February draft on the Mississippi abortion case. Whether or not anybody in charge knows the identity of the leaker is open to speculation. Obviously either the leaker will be found out, or he/she will escape detection. For the good of the country, the leaker cannot go undetected, and this goes for whether he/she is on the left or on the right. The leaker must be identified and his/her punishment must be severe, or else this type of surreptitious behavior will be repeated in the future.
Let’s assume that at some point, which I will refer to as the “red line,” the leaker still remains unidentified. What should be done? My suggestion would be “peer pressure” … significant peer pressure.
Remember, back when we were kids and somebody threw a ball through Mrs. Jones’s window. “Who did it?” our parents would ask … Silence! What then happened was “peer pressure.” Often it went something like the following: “If the culprit does not own up to what he/she did, all of you will all be grounded for a week; talk it over; you have thirty minutes.” Inevitably, because of peer pressure, the culprit typically owned up, often with tears. Likewise, in high school, if someone smuggled out a copy of a test’s answers, and gave it to another class, the same basic scenario would occur – using peer pressure to identify the individual that leaked the correct answers to the other class. Here the punishment for the entire class would necessarily need to be more severe if the culprit did not own up … for instance, everyone in both classes would receive an ‘F’ on that test. The peer pressure would be ginormous, because the consequence was going to be extreme. In this situation, the culprit was going to receive an ‘F’ one way or the other. All of his/her classmates would explicitly say to the culprit, “Why should be all be punished for something you did. This ‘F’ could potentially play a role in my not getting into the college of my choice. Admit what you did so we all can move on.”
Here, in the SCOTUS leak situation, I would suggest that if the “red line”came and went without the leaker stepping up or otherwise being identified, that the same peer pressure concept be used. This time with very extreme consequences!
For instance: everyone who worked for any of the Justices would be given a pink-slip effective in thirty days, and in addition all would be threatened with the loss of their license to practice law. Although I do not think that any of the Justices were involved in this chicanery, if perchance one was … impeachment.
Dollars to doughnuts, we would learn the identity of the leaker within a week of the “red line” date.
5/6/22