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Who leaked the Supreme Court story?

This is still a question that's bugging SCOTUS watchers: Who leaked the tick-tock on Chief Justice John Roberts's change of heart to CBS News?

On Sunday, three days after the Supreme Court voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act, CBS's Jan Crawford scooped that Roberts had initially sided with the conservative justices, only to switch his position and side with the liberals to uphold the bulk of the law — "according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations."

But who are those two sources?

(Also on POLITICO: Roberts's switch: Gasoline on the fire)

GWU Law professor Orin Kerr, the one who got the ball rolling on this discussion, notes that Crawford's story has details "only the justices and their clerks would likely know."

"The leaks go into what the justices were thinking and what signal they meant to send with their actions," he argues (and provides evidence — but you should read the story because there's plenty). "Further, I doubt Crawford would run with a story with that kind of detail that was sourced less directly. So my best guess would be that the two sources she relies on are from the among the justices and their clerks."

But Kerr rules out the clerks, simply because a clerk would be "crazy" to leak. "A clerk who leaked this and is identified has likely made a career-ending move. ... Even assuming a clerk or two was so extraordinarily dismissive of the confidentiality rules to leak this, it would be nuts to leak over the weekend when you have to show up at the court for work tomorrow."

Christopher Shea of The Wall Street Journal doesn't think that's so nuts. Like Kerr, he notes that clerks leaked details of Bush v. Gore, albeit four years after the fact. He also notes that famed SCOTUS watcher Jeffrey Toobin, of The New Yorker and CNN, launched his career disclosing the inner workings of United States v. Oliver North.

Neither efforts to rule the clerks in or out are entirely convincing, but let's assume that at least one justice leaked. Needless to say, the conservatives have a greater motivation for getting the story out — for letting the world know that they had washed their hands of the ruling, as Time's Adam Sorensen puts it.

Which conservatives? From Kerr:

Crawford appears to have particularly good relations with several of the justices, especially among its more conservative members. Here’s Crawford interviewing Justice Thomas, and here’s Crawford interviewing Justice Scalia.

Kerr ends the speculation there (with caveats and doubts), but The New Republic's Noam Scheiber picks up the ball. Between the aforementioned, he leans toward Judge Clarence Thomas, noting that Thomas was the hero of Crawford's 2007 book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court."

If there is a second justice, Scheiber bets on Justice Anthony Kennedy:

Crawford’s piece really goes out of its way to cast him as principled and intellectually formidable, something that, suffice it to say, is a bit at odds with the conventional wisdom. ... It would hardly be the first time a journalist repaid a highly-valuable source by casting him or her in a favorable light.... As for Kennedy’s motives, one gets the sense reading Crawford’s piece—which was clearly shaped by Kennedy’s “close associates,” if not Kennedy himself—that he smelled an opportunity to redeem himself with conservatives and relinquish the turncoat title to John Roberts. In fact, the whole rehabilitation effort smacks of the same grandiosity that critics mock in his opinions. If it were any other justice, the over-the-top defense of Kennedy might suggest they weren’t the source. For Kennedy, the gun isn’t just smoking, it’s downright ablaze. A little subtlety might have gone a long way here.

So: Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Kennedy, all in the running. No love for Samuel Alito, huh?

UPDATE: An item of interest from today's New York Times:

"In a 2009 interview on C-Span, Justice Thomas singled her out as a favorite reporter. “There are wonderful people out here who do a good job — do a fantastic job — like Jan Greenburg,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Ms. Crawford by her married name at the time.

Footage of that interview is available here, compliments of C-Span.

ThinkProgress also has joined the Thomas camp, though their accusations — "Thomas has shown no indication in the past that he cares about the sanctity of institutions or the consequences of his actions" — don't necessarily suffice for evidence.