Other former Supreme Court clerks say Landau drafted the opinion in the case for which Thomas remains best known — that of Hudson v. McMillian, in which Keith Hudson, a black inmate of a Louisiana prison, sued his guards for a 1983 beating they had inflicted on him while he was shackled.
Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the Court.
All of this raises an intriguing question: Was Kennedy aware when he drafted the January 2010 Citizens United opinion that nonprofits were being widely used to avoid public disclosure of political spending?
Some have suggested that he could do so (assuming Kennedy votes to uphold) to make the ruling seem less contentious or to have more control over the drafting of the opinion.
Earlier on Sunday, the secretary of state's office had said it would draft that opinion.
The judge even complained that he had spent the Christmas holiday considering the stay request and drafting an opinion in order to speed the case along.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The staff of the Federal Election Commission has drafted an opinion that would allow the two major parties' presidential nominees to adopt what amounts to a fund-raising truce.
Mr. Silverstein said he remembered that embassy officials talked about drafting opinion articles to be published under the names of American supporters.
Several legislators said on Wednesday that even if there were room for different views about the letter of the law, the draft opinion added to the doubts that have been raised about Judge Robertson's nomination.
Early in his tenure, he drafted an opinion that withdrew the Bush-era legal guidance — the so-called torture memos — governing C.I.A. interrogations.
