'My biggest hope is it wasn't a willful breach' says former U.S. Supreme Court clerk about leaked draft majority opinion

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Ashley Johnson says it was a privilege to serve as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas in 2005-2006 at the U.S. Supreme Court. 

"What an honor it is to even be in the building and be able to learn from the Justices." 

Johnson, who is now an attorney at Gibson Dunn in Dallas, says she was in disbelief when she heard this week that a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito on Roe v. Wade was leaked and published in Politico.

"My first thought was that surely it was not going to turn out to be authentic, because if there's one thing that is ingrained in you from the minute you walk in the building, it is that the deliberations of the court and everything that goes on there is confidential." 

That document turned out to be authentic and Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into the leak.  

Johnson says, "I've thought of all the different paths of how it could have gotten out and all of them seem shocking to me that anyone in the court would give something out like that. Because it's so important to the functioning of the court to be able to exchange opinions and drafts and work through it and try to improve it. It's very disappointing." 

Johnson was one of three dozen clerks who helped the justices do research and give input on the draft opinions. 

She says they could not send those documents outside the court.

"They had both an internal and an external computer system, and if you were on the internal one where internal things were circulated, it wasn't possible to send things out." 

The easier way to remove a document was to print a copy of it.

"My biggest hope would be that it turns out that there was not a willful breach of confidentiality by somebody employed by the court. But maybe, somehow, there was somebody visiting or something that could be, you know, you could lock down on and prevent from happening again, without losing trust within the court." 

If the document was printed and carried out of the building, Johnson says the court may now have to search employees when they leave for the day. Justices may have to limit the distribution of the draft opinions as well. 

She says what makes the Supreme Court special is the collaboration and trust between clerks and the justices to discuss and debate cases, particularly the difficult ones.

"They're not always going to agree but to get to, you know, where everybody has really gone through all the issues debated them been heard. And it's really a unique place in how well it is able to do that and how collegial the court is. So that would obviously be the biggest thing you would hate to see the breach of confidentiality cause harm to." 

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