Timing: This draft was circulated in Feb. If a liberal was mad about it, why wait until April to send it to Politico? The op will be out in June. What are the benefits of releasing it early? And a BIG downside – the focus on the leak itself instead of the opinion.

Leaking is much more of the style of conservatives right now. Think about what Justice Thomas is doing as a model for a clerk here – making a mockery of the Court’s recusal rules re. his wife’s role in the Jan 6 coup attempts.

If you work inside the Court, you know that the most concrete impact of the leak is to lock in this opinion essentially as is. Any edits at this point reveal jockeying between Justices, undermine the majority, and Court itself. Embarassing to the majority.

Far and away most likely impact of the leaked draft is that it locks in 5 votes for this opinion, essentially without edits. Who would want that? So: This is about as extreme an opinion as you can have overturning Roe.

It talks about fetuses being people as a matter of ancient law (teeing up idea that fetuses are constitutionally PROTECTED – no abortion anywhere as matter of conlaw.) And its arguments undermine all of SCOTUS’s gay rights and contraception decisions.

Liberals have lived for years trying to eke out a sentence here or there in SCOTUS opinions to make these conservative decisions less terrible. Why leak something and undermine that whole strategy?.

Now let’s talk psychology of SCt clerks. The kinds of liberal students who end up at the Court are not an activist bunch. They are enormously risk averse and rule-abiding. Hard to see how one of them blows their career out of the water in this way (for what benefit?).

Conservatives have shown that they are willing to break the public trust in the Court to get their way. If you want the liberal view, read Justice Breyer's recent book - LITERALLY CALLED "the peril of politics."

Back to timing. Draft majorities circulate first, and then concurrences and dissents. So this is about the right timing for concurrences to come out. I think best bet is that Chief Justice Roberts circulated one recently, adopting a more moderate position.

Maybe Roberts says abortions ok in some time frame, preserving exceptions for the life of the woman, etc. And Kavanaugh is tempted by it – maybe not enough to vote for it, but enough to demand some changes to the Alito opinion.

Statement just released by 47 Yale Law faculty to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please share widely.

If the Supreme Court cared about democracy, it wouldn’t be gutting Voting Rights. In ways that specifically make it harder for people of color to vote.

The draft opinion is DARK. It uses false history. No regard for what it means to be forced to give birth. Throws women, especially poor women, under the bus. Blows up doctrines that protect LGBT rights and contraception.

Why? The Alito draft says its all about "democracy." Getting the court out of politics. Don't believe it for a second. To understand why, need to see what else has been happening at the Court in recent years.

If it cared about democracy, it wouldn’t invent "free speech" doctrines to strike down campaign finance laws. And laws that protect the power of working people. It is now regularly radically reversing precedent. Nothing “originalist” about any of this.

Some asked how many of the fac responded. We asked only permanent fac, maybe 70 people. Overnight - one biz hour involved -more than 2/3 signed. Many who did not are emerita, travelling etc. Pretty unprecedented.

feels like a good day to say that I'm voting for @BernieSanders.

"We construct the kinds of markets we want—and that means that we should embrace the capacity of law and politics to construct a radically more inclusive political economic order." With Jed Purdy, David Grewal in @BostonReview today.

Take another example: Cedar Point Nursery, from last year, where the Court struck down a state labor regulation around about as long as Roe. The rule allowed organizers to briefly visit farms to talk to workers. Court threw it out as “taking” property protected by the Const.

Cedar Pt is a radical decision. Makes the Constitution into a weapon against laws that require businesses to allow inspections on their property, and even antidiscrim laws that say you can’t fire workers for any reason. Where’s democracy now?