Court’s icky leaks
Ex-clerk calls Roe slip a ‘disgrace’
A former Supreme Court clerk for the late Justice Harry Blackmun who worked on the jurist’s landmark majority opinion in Roe v. Wade in 1973 strongly condemned the recent leak of a draft decision potentially overturning the case.
Jim Ziglar (inset), now 76, ripped the leak as a “travesty” and “disgrace” and believes it likely came from an activist clerk with access to Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion.
“Whoever did this . . . I hope the son of a bitch gets disbarred for life and nobody will hire him,” Ziglar said.
Ziglar, who clerked for Blackmun during the historic 1972 term, has had a lengthy and colorful career in the 50 years following the decision.
He worked as a practicing lawyer and investment banker, and served as an assistant secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Services under George W. Bush and sergeant at arms for the Senate. Ziglar declined to offer his thoughts on the Alito draft, but said the original decision in Roe had always left him uneasy.
The former clerk specifically zeroed in on Blackmun’s use of the legal doctrine of substantive due process, which the justice used to assert a right to privacy that guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion. The theory holds that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights — such as privacy — even if they are not expressly mentioned in the document. “The use of substantive due process to reach this result in Roe was probably not advisable,” he said. “My view on Roe was that I would have decided it differently on a different basis. “I am not a fan of abortion on demand, but I am also not a fan of prohibiting all abortions,” Ziglar added.
Conservative jurists have long derided substantive due process. Former Justice Antonin Scalia, a famous Roe hater who unsuccessfully fought his entire career to overturn the decision, told CNN in 2012 substantive due process “does not make any sense.”
Mike Davis, a former chief counsel for nominations of Sen. Chuck Grassley, agreed. “It’s a constitutional stew. It’s completely made up judicial activism,” he said. “Roe v. Wade was an egregiously wrong power grab, regardless of what you think about abortion.”
Ziglar stressed he remained supportive of the overall ruling in Roe, noting he was far from alone among its defenders to have misgivings.
Former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a ferocious champion of abortion rights, had also said the decision was flawed. In many public remarks, Ginsburg argued an incremental approach to abortion rights would have been preferable.
French publisher Gallimard will release a recently discovered manuscript of literary giant Celine. More than 5,000 pages of the author’s works were lost in 1944 when the anti-Semitic writer fled with his wife and cat to Nazi Germany.
The trove of documents were allegedly stolen from the writer’s Paris apartment by a member of the French Resistance.
Award-winning filmmaker Wim Wenders is set to work on a movie about Japan’s new public toilets.
The recently constructed toilets are part of an urban-renewal project in Tokyo and have been designed by a host of architects. Some of the 12 restrooms already completed feature colorful transparent cubicles.
A group of 30 Ukrainian musicians who fled the war in their country have created an orchestra in exile in Germany.
Backed by funding from Alliance4Ukraine, an aid organization, the musicians made their debut in Berlin Tuesday. Margaryta Grynyvetska, the conductor of the Odessa National Academic Opera and the Ballet Theater, fled the fighting at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February.
An award-winning artist has fled the country after his plans to disrupt the country’s Victory Day parade on Monday were thwarted by security forces.
Danila Tkachenko had planned to install 140 smoke grenades in the air conditioners of a building next to the Kremlin.
The devices were set to go off remotely and spread blue and yellow-colored smoke — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — as soldiers marched down Red Square. Authorities opened a criminal case immediately.
An ancient mosque destroyed by ISIS rebels in 2017 is being rebuilt, thanks to funding from the United Arab Emirates. The AlNouri Mosque in Mosul had stood for 850 years before it was heavily damaged during the three-year rule of ISIS in northern Iraq.
Authorities have recovered 44,000 bricks from the city’s old town that will be used in the rebuilding.