Editorial Advisory Board: Our wounded Supreme Court

The unprecedented leak of a draft opinion authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito overruling the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade and thus permitting state legislatures to decide the legality of abortion sent a shock wave through the national legal establishment like few other incidents involving the court. Lawyers of all stripes, journalists who report regularly on the work of the federal courts, as well as others who pay attention to developments in the national legal system, were at once dismayed and, at the same time, unsurprised by the disclosure of the draft opinion.