"There have indeed been leaks at the court before, albeit of a different scale. One of them actually was about the case at the heart of today's conversation: In 1973, the original Roe decision was leaked to the press before the court had formally announced it. Jonathan Peters, a media law professor at the University of Georgia, noted in a Twitter thread that there were actually two Roe-related leaks in the 1970s. First, the Washington Post published a story about the court's internal deliberations, including a June 1972 memo from Justice William O. Douglas to his colleagues that was mysteriously leaked. Seven months later, Time magazine published the final decision and vote details just hours before the court was due to announce it — the result of an early scoop and a delayed ruling. A Supreme Court clerk named Larry Hammond told Time staff reporter David Beckwith, a law school acquaintance, that the Roe ruling was coming, according to lawyer and author James Robenalt, who detailed the incident in a Washington Post column on Monday. Hammond gave Beckwith the information "on background," and it was only to be reported once the opinion came down from the court. But the ruling was slightly delayed, and that week's magazine ended up hitting newsstands a few hours too soon."