Norms for me, but not for thee

“We hold that Roe should be overturned,” reads the leaked draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in what would be a historic ruling for the U.S. Supreme Court, overturning its 49-year-old decision that invented a constitutional right to abortion. Both the draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, and the leak are monumental in themselves. If the 5-4 decision holds, it is worthy of rejoicing, the result of a half-century of relentless, pro-life activism.

But the leak itself is unprecedented and deeply subversive of the high court’s integrity. Jan Crawford of CBS News described it as “an incredible breach of privacy and trust at the Supreme Court, raising questions of how the court will ever recover.” SCOTUSblog argued that, for the legal community, “It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.” Thankfully, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a scorching statement, vowing to get to the bottom of the breach.

The leak is a dangerous violation of norms, but it elicited little to no reaction from many of the liberal politicians and media types who have screamed the most loudly about the erosion of democracy and violation of norms. Most disappointing, but not all that surprising, was the response of President Joe Biden, who ran on a platform of a return to normalcy and an upholding of democracy. He was strangely silent about the dangers of the leak, issuing instead a boilerplate statement that doubled down on the virtues of Roe and a made a commitment to enshrine the right to abortion into federal law.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a joint statement, echoed the White House, not only omitting any condemnation of this breach but proposing their own version of norm-busting, a call to end the legislative filibuster in the Senate. Their responses represented politics at the expense of those precious “democratic norms” that Democrats have appealed to over the last five to six years. Most Democrats followed this same pattern: Use the leak to gain an advantage in outrage and intimidation but do not address the historic leak itself. So much for concern about democratic norms.

What’s more, most journalists, with few exceptions, seemed to see no problem with the leak, and some even mocked it. Cable news hosts and print journalists who reliably complain every time a Republican governor signs conservative legislation were strangely quiet. The cable news chyrons that blinkered out warnings about the end of democracy for a half-decade were suddenly more subdued.

It’s hard to overestimate the way this kind of hypocrisy works to hurt the preservation of democratic self-government. If our ruling class can only find their outrage when the erosion of norms comes from one side, they are making a profound statement about their true intentions. One can imagine if this was a leak about a decision favored by liberals, media voices would be howling with disgust.

To be sure, Christians should care about the upholding of virtuous norms in our political institutions. We should build trust in our institutions, not tear them down. “Norms” are but rules and practices that signal the validity and trustworthiness of government, and God decreed government for our good.

Our Christian view of government is anchored in Romans 13, which assures us that human governments derive their power from God, who delegates authority for the flourishing of citizens. Healthy societies depend on the rule of law, virtue, and liberty. But our concerns for democratic norms cannot be driven by partisanship. And yet, if we care about our fragile system of government, we should not limit our concern to what serves our own side of the aisle. We should be vigilant to protect ordered liberty, whatever the threat, wherever it is found.