A group of about 90 former Supreme Court clerks (along with some prominent practitioners) have signed a statement about the recent Vanity Fair article on Bush v. Gore. An excerpt from the statement:
[T]hese breaches of each clerk’s duty of confidentiality to his or her appointing justice — and to the Court as an institution — cannot be excused as acts of “courage” or something the clerks were “honor-bound” to do. To the contrary, this is conduct unbecoming any attorney or legal adviser working in a position of trust. Furthermore, it is behavior that violates the Code of Conduct to which all Supreme Court clerks, as the article itself acknowledges, agree to be bound.
Although the signatories below have differing views on the merits of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the election cases of 2000, they are unanimous in their belief that it is inappropriate for a Supreme Court clerk to disclose confidential information, received in the course of the law clerk’s duties, pertaining to the work of the Court.
Given the polarization that seems to infect nearly everything relating to Bush v. Gore, it is perhaps worth noting that most of the signatories clerked for the Justices in the Bush v. Gore majority. As far as I know, no former clerks of the Bush v. Gore dissenters signed on.**
In any event, Tony Mauro has more on the story here. Thanks to Howard for the link.
**UPDATE: A reader points out that one of the signatories, Michael Leiter, clerked for BvG dissenter Justice Stephen Breyer in OT01.
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