The Veil and the Shield
Leaks, Security, and Personal Exposure in the Supreme Court of the United States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48162/rev.100.049Keywords:
Judicial leaks, Deliberative secrecy, Judicial security, Supreme Court of the United States, Public confidence in courtsAbstract
This article examines two phenomena that are usually treated separately, the leaking of internal deliberations and threats against the physical safety of judges, as symptoms of a single institutional transformation: the shift of the Supreme Court of the United States from the least visible branch of the federal government to a permanent object of political conflict. The first part reconstructs the genealogy of leaks, from the Wheeling Bridge litigation of 1852 to the publication of internal memoranda in 2026, and assesses the three institutional responses attempted so far: the disciplinary rule of 1973, the 2022–2023 investigation, and the nondisclosure agreements imposed in 2024. The second part examines the federal judicial protection regime and the July 2026 congressional testimony of Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett. It argues that the Court faces an unresolved tension between claiming inviolability for its institutional interior and deliberately exposing that of its members.
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