Supreme Court Leak On Abortion 'Unprecedented, Uncharted,' NJ Expert Says

MOUNT LAUREL, NJ — The leak of the U.S. Supreme Court's draft opinion regarding an abortion case has far-reaching ramifications as well as not-so-distant parallels to other issues that divide the country, a law professor said in an interview.

"We are walking into uncharted, unprecedented territory here," Kenneth Mariano, an assistant professor of political science at Rowan College at Burlington County's Mount Laurel Campus, told Patch regarding the draft opinion being circulated weeks before the court's official ruling.

He said the draft opinion likely is the result of former President Donald Trump's three U.S. Supreme Court appointments, which "tilted the balance of the court to the right."

However, Mariano also emphasized that Tuesday's leak was of the draft opinion, not the final one.

"We can't forget the fact that it's still a draft. It's not 100 percent final," he said.

Thus, there is a possibility of the final opinion being different from what the leaked document indicated, he continued.

"Since the public knows about this, the public will play a larger role in trying to get a justice to either change or solidify their votes," Mariano said. "United States Supreme Court Justices are not supposed to be political. They have to make a decision ... without any politics involved. When it comes to changing their minds, we don't know if they're going to change their minds or not."

The U.S. Supreme Court having one opinion regarding abortion and the State of New Jersey having a different opinion raises all sorts of questions and confusion, according to Mariano.

"It's federal versus state rights. Is it too much government? Or do we have? Do we want bigger government or we want a smaller government? Referring to the federal government, how much involved should they be in state affairs?" he asked rhetorically.

Mariano likened the federal-versus-state law questions to New Jersey legalizing recreational marijuana use while the federal government has not.

"Technically, it's still illegal in the United States," he said. "If the federal government wants to crack down if they choose to do so these individual states. What really complicates things even more is that we have now advances in medical procedures, and the law has not caught up to the advanced medical procedures that we have these days."

For that reason and others, the U.S. Supreme Court's final decision, which will likely be announced in June or July, will by no means be the last time the word "abortion" makes headlines, according to Mariano.

"If the [U.S. Supreme Court] votes don't change, we'll probably going to see more states pass laws to protect abortion rights, because the states will argue that they do have rights to govern as they see fit," he said.

"This happens to be a very divisive topic," Mariano continued. "I wouldn't expect it to go away anytime soon, even after the court's decision. But we can't forget that what came out Tuesday was just a draft that to give us an idea where the court is heading. It is not 100 percent final, and this issue is not going to go away anytime soon even after the final decision that's going to be released in a few months."

He felt that prior to Tuesday's draft opinion leak, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — the case that allowed same-sex marriages to occur and be recognized — may be the last time a Supreme Court decision reached the level of impact as this recent draft abortion decision.

Although that decision was not released ahead of time, it still "had huge magnitude of the decision and how it impacted many people," Mariano said.

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