Cover-Up Would Be Crime in Probe of Supreme Court Ruling Leak

Chief Justice William Rehnquist gathered a couple dozen new Supreme Court clerks together in 1994 and made very clear the importance of both the work they would do and the need to keep it a secret.

No one was asked to make promises or sign confidentiality agreements. They just knew.

“The norms and the institution were so powerful that was all that was needed,” Kent Greenfield, then a clerk for Justice David Souter and now a law professor at Boston College, said Tuesday. “The court, rightly so, believes that this confidentiality is essential during the deliberation process.”

That’s why Monday’s ...