Anyone see Abrams Report on SELECTION 2000 (Vanity Fair Article)

[JCMach1]

The law clerks spoke to the reporter from Vanity Fair concerning JUST how political the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision was.

The thing that absolutely floored me was that before this article (2004) NO ONE had ever talked to the law clerks. Our media was MIA and complicit in the installation of Bush. Don't forget it and don't get over it.

I usually hate Mr. Abrams... but thumbs-up for the good job on this story.

[Gore1FL]

1. I caught it this afternoon by accident.

I was impessed it was gettng airtime.

[krkaufman]

2. links to discussion of the VF scoop

http://volokh.com/posts/1094944557.shtml

Then there is the question of law clerk confidentiality. The clerks who spoke to Vanity Fair apparently viewed their duty of confidentiality to the Court as subject to waiver when in their judgment the Court has gone badly astray:


To the inevitable charges that they broke their vow of confidentiality, the clerks have a ready response: by taking on Bush v. Gore and deciding the case as it did, the Court broke its promise to them. "We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court's power, and such an extraordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we'd otherwise honor," one clerk says.

VF article downloadable as 2 separate PDFs here:

http://www.ticketstubs.org/mefi/35792

[JCMach1]

3. Keep these links kicked

This is an important article... and report...

Why isn't THIS on 60 Minutes or the MAJOR news shows?


I intend to e-mail the show later today for running this...

[e-mail]

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. People did in fact talk to the law clerks at the time...

...and the law clerks said nothing.

The terms of the confidentiality agreements under which clerks are employed were strengthened after the Selection, and were pretty stringent even before then, as a result of the flap over the Woodward book The Brethren.

Edward Lazarus, who wrote a great book (Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court) on the Court's rightward turn, covered this issue for the JURIST web site, and for some of the specialty press, at the time.

It took the actuality of what had only been a theoretical Bush government to scare the clerks mentioned in the VF article into talking.

The clerks were leaking, to be sure. I'm not terribly well connected -- all I have is a brother who is a DC gov't lawyer, who keeps up with old interning and law school friends in the District, and I was hearing rumors of ex-parte contacts between SC clerks for the Gore majority and Bush campaign during the recount within weeks of the decision.