Jack Shafer writes:

Although the justices are political appointees, the court pretends to rise above politics. It conducts its work under a veil and depends on the press to fetishize the mysteries of the temple.

It derives its authority not from the people but from the cosmos, the court’s deifiers would have you believe. Hence the robes that rival Batman’s cape, the court’s ban on cameras and the grand edifice from which it hands down its rulings. But this exalted view of the court, we must remind ourselves, is not a part of the natural order. It is of the court’s creation. Even the magnificent Vermont- and Georgia-marble palace the Supreme Court calls home is a relatively new addition to its image. Until 1936, the court did its business out of the Capitol, and none but the chief justice kept an office on the premises. Like office workers during the Covid lockdown, the other justices worked from home.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia became famous for making his clerks pledge silence about what they saw and heard. “I only want to say it once,” a Scalia clerk remembers him saying. “If I ever discover that you have betrayed the confidences of what goes on in these chambers, I will do everything in my power to ruin your career.” (A clerk leaked the original Roe decision to Time magazine back in 1973. The article appeared on newsstand a few hours before the decision was released, and the clerk almost lost his job.)

The POLITICO exclusive did the nation a service by ignoring the magic fairy dust that envelops the court to take an overdue look at the court’s decision-making process. The story was all the more warranted because if we had a viable Congress, it would have sorted out the legality of abortion by now. Instead, we’ve shunted to the Supreme Court the job of legislating what the abortion law should be. Viewed from that angle, the POLITICO scoop is less an intrusion into the Supreme Court’s sanctified domain than it is an investigation into a piece of evolving legislation. [Continue reading…]