Nobody Cares Who Leaks Things

And they shouldn’t.

It has been roughly 20 hours since Politico’s incredible scoop of the Supreme Court draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade hit, and I, like millions of Americans, am still stunned. The number of people’s lives who are going to be devastated by the ruling — if it ends up standing as the final ruling, as it is expected to — is impossible to quantify; it’s unfathomable and tragic and very, very scary. I’d recommend reading The Cut’s coverage of the ruling over anything more I’d have to say about it.

I do feel obliged to note one thing, though: In a week, no one is going to care about who leaked the ruling, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. I understand why Chief Justice John Roberts would be upset about it; it’s his court, after all, and he’d like to make sure his documents are secure. Journalists can gossip (and hopefully also report!) about the leaker; that’s what we do, after all. And I understand why Republicans would like to make a big issue about the leak itself; not only would they like to distract you from the fact that keeping legal abortion is overwhelmingly popular in this country, they also have become so knee-jerk outraged about everything, everywhere, all of the time, that they can’t even accept the victory of having their entire 50-year project of judicial activism pay off, even for one afternoon.

But there’s no reason for anyone else to care. The leaker is beside the point. What matters is that the opinion exists. Roberts himself has confirmed its veracity. That’s an actual justice, Alito, who wrote it. (In a totally snarky, jackass sort of way, too.) It is very likely about to become law, something that will affect every single citizen of this country, in one way or another. Honestly: Who gives a shit who leaked it? And more to the point: Average people don’t care either. What people want is information. They do not care how they got it. Do you think the average person can tell you where scoops come from? If the document is legitimate — and, again, the Court itself has confirmed that it is — then how what does the leaker’s political beliefs (beliefs, by the way, that seem to me just as likely to be conservative as they are liberal) have anything to do with it? If Roberts had said, “well, yeah, that’s the draft, except for some reason there are sections rewritten by someone…