The Supreme Court guards its privacy. Too bad it doesn't care about yours and mine [View all]

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The Supreme Court guards its privacy. Too bad it doesn't care about yours and mine
For a cabal that's about to kill off the constitutional right to privacy, SCOTUS sure keeps itself buttoned up

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2022 8:00AM


(Salon) To use Justice Samuel Alito's criteria in his recently-leaked draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, where is it written in the Constitution that practically everything that happens at the Supreme Court is secret?

The answer, my worthies, is that it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Secrecy — or, if you will, privacy — at the court is another one of those invented rights Alito and his pals are so fond of yapping about. The secrecy of that august body is almost absolute: Everything that happens at the Supreme Court, with the exception of its hearings and the publication of its decisions, is secret. The court maintains complete secrecy about how and why it chooses which cases to hear. The conferences held by justices during which they decide cases and record their votes is so secret they don't even allow their clerks inside the doors when they consider the arguments on either side of a case. Most justices demand that their clerks take an oath to keep secret everything they learn while carrying out their jobs.

There are no federal laws which mandate or govern the secrecy enjoyed by the Supreme Court. In fact, whoever leaked the Alito draft opinion cannot even be prosecuted, because he or she broke no law. There is nothing in federal statute or in the Constitution itself, for that matter, which mandates that draft opinions — or any other document produced at the court by the justices or their clerks or anyone else — be kept away from the prying eyes of the press or the public which, by the way, pays the salary of everyone working in that pile of Vermont and Georgia marble located just behind the Capitol.

If you listen to the justices themselves or so-called court-watchers or even members of the bar who practice before the Supreme Court, the reason for all the secrecy is tradition. It's always been that way, and so it should remain. In other words, everything at the Supreme Court is secret because they say so. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/05/14/the-guards-its-privacy-too-it-doesnt-care-about-yours-and-mine/