The Supreme Court’s Most Impressive Achievement

by Stephen L. Carter

Bloomberg
June 29, 2012

The most fascinating aspect of the Supreme Court’s anticlimactic decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act isn’t the outcome. It’s that until the ruling was handed down, nobody outside the court knew what the outcome was going to be.

Imagine that. Smack in the middle of a city where leaks are a way of life, here was a pending action that pundits were proclaiming would determine President Barack Obama’s legacy, and the capital’s legion of political reporters was unable to ferret out the smallest advance hint of the court’s intentions -- even though the initial vote probably came three months ago. The justices themselves, their law clerks and all the personnel of the court cooperate in maintaining the veil.

In an era when we have become accustomed to a government that can’t keep its secrets, an institution whose members know how to keep their mouths shut is refreshing. The recent cascade of disclosures of national-security information from the Obama administration is both embarrassing and destructive. It is not, however, atypical. The old cliche is wrong: Washington doesn’t leak like a sieve. It leaks like a flood.

The current contretemps isn’t even the administration’s first episode of national-security leakage. Shortly before Obama decided on the Afghanistan surge, his consideration of one was leaked to the press. As analysts pointed out, the leak was almost certainly a device to pressure the White House to go ahead with the surge.

“Wires climb with secrets,” Carl Sandburg wrote in his poem “Skyscraper.” Had he been writing about Washington, he might have said instead that wires buzz with secrets -- because, for too many people who possess them, the great joy of having a secret seems to be the sharing. One reason to admire the court, even when one disagrees with it, is its ability to withstand the temptation to which other government bodies regularly yield.

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