The Supreme Court leak is a form of insurrection

OPINION:

The leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion, showing a preliminary vote by the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, is an assault of historic proportions on America as a constitutional republic.

I am not talking about the contents of the draft opinion. It is no surprise that the conservative majority of the court would overturn one of the greatest acts of liberal judicial activism in American history. I am talking about the fact of the leak itself.

For all those who have spent the last year and a half believing that American democracy is under attack and that the events of January 6, 2020, constituted an insurrection, where is the outrage about the clear insurrectionist intention of whoever decided to break the sanctity of the decision-making process of the United States Supreme Court?

We do not know as of this writing who is responsible for the leak or the ideological orientation of whoever did it but we do know that at least part of the motivation must have been to strike fear in the justices by destroying the confidentiality of the process in which members of the court have always worked, for more than two centuries.

Almost immediately when the leak occurred, an angry mob gathered outside the Supreme Court, chanting to abolish the court, or pack it, calling the conservative justices “fascists.” Meanwhile, the even angrier mob on Twitter was openly discussing murdering the conservative justices.

The founders of our country wanted three coequal but differently governed branches of government, with the Supreme Court, purposefully shielded from public opinion, while the other two branches draw their authority from the will of voters.

This isn’t a bug in our system. It’s a central feature. The independence of the court from the opinions of mobs and the vagaries of politics, so decisions can be made, as the best judgments of the justices at any time allow, solely on the basis of the principles of law — this is paramount to the American experiment.

Ask anyone who has come to this country from the world’s many tyrannies – what makes America different? They will not tell you it is elections that are our most distinctive feature. They will tell you that what is most special about America is the rule of law and in particular that the rights of the people against the power of government can be protected through the law.

All of this requires a truly independent judiciary, capped by a supreme court whose mission is solely fidelity to the constitution. The leaker knows all of this and wants to subvert it, wants to substitute his or her political agenda for the absolutely essential process by which justice in our country is administered.

As we have been hearing from the left frequently in recent months, insurrection cannot be tolerated and must be punished. This goes for sure with respect to this ghastly grenade rolled into the halls of the supreme court.

• George Bochetto is an attorney, constitutional law expert, and candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.