The Supreme Court docket made enormous headlines on Friday with its resolution to finish the constitutional proper to abortion. However the resolution was additionally uncommon as a result of it was already identified.
Politico rattled the nation final month by reporting on a draft opinion for the case, written by Justice Samuel Alito, that ran almost 100 pages. Longtime court docket watchers had been shocked by the story, since there was no precedent for leaking a complete draft opinion to the media nicely upfront of a choice being introduced. Because it turned out, the ultimate opinion, written by Justice Alito, had echoes of the draft.
The article in May was a serious scoop for 2 Politico reporters, Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward. Inside a day of their story publishing, the Supreme Court docket confirmed that the draft opinion was actual and introduced an investigation into the leak. The reporters have remained tight-lipped on their sources. Politico declined to touch upon the supply of the knowledge.
The article on the draft opinion led to rampant hypothesis about who may need been behind the leak, and their motivation. Many liberals recommended that it was performed by a conservative attempting to solidify the votes for almost all. Many conservatives recommended that it was a liberal hoping to induce sufficient public outrage to get the justices to rethink their place.
Mr. Gerstein and Mr. Ward have continued to work collectively on Supreme Court docket reporting in current weeks. Their teamwork yielded a follow-up scoop on the court docket’s inside deliberations.
The shared byline of Mr. Gerstein, 52, and Mr. Ward, 32, puzzled some journalists within the Politico newsroom after their story revealed due to the variations of their seniority and protection assignments.
Mr. Gerstein, a fixture in Washington journalism identified for his penchant to delve into the trivia of court docket choices, has been with Politico for greater than a decade. Mr. Ward, a nationwide safety reporter, got here up by the world of coverage journalism, working at Vox.com earlier than becoming a member of Politico final yr.
