"Leaks can serve a really important role in helping to correct government malfeasance, to encourage government to be careful about what it does in secret and to preserve democratic processes."

Said Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, author of "Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11," quoted in The Washington Post on December 6, 2012, in a column titled "Why we don’t need another law against intelligence leaks" (by Leonard Downie Jr.).

And here's a CNN piece by Princeton history professor Julian Zelizer, "Why Washington is leaking like a sieve," published May 31, 2017:

Trump, who has called leaks “criminal action, a criminal act,” no longer expresses the kind of sympathy for leakers that he did during the campaign, when he praised WikiLeaks for its publication of emails relating to Hillary Clinton.... 

Leaking information can be extremely dangerous to national security. It can undercut the ability of government to function, it can generate a dysfunctional culture of distrust in government, and it can put lives in danger. Yet it is important to remember that some leaks have been vital to discoveries that protected and strengthened our democracy. These were leaks that resulted from members of the government who were frustrated and frightened by what they saw happening in the halls of power. 

Most famous leak The most famous leak of all came in 1971: the Pentagon Papers.... In 2005, the Sunday Times of London published an article based on notes from a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s national security team, held before the war in Iraq, where officials were concerned that President Bush was basing the operation on faulty evidence about weapons of mass destruction.... Edward Snowden has garnered [yes, garnered] praise from many on the left and some on the right for his decision to leak the evidence that exposed a massive government surveillance program.... 

Not all leaks have been so virtuous....  

There are times when our democracy depends on leaks to learn what is going on in the inner sanctums of Washington....

None of that was about the Supreme Court, but please consider the larger picture as you analyze the leak from the Supreme Court.

I'm reading this NYT article, published today, "As Leak Theories Circulate, Supreme Court Marshal Takes Up Investigation/Not since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein refused for decades to disclose the identity of their Watergate source has Washington been as eager to unmask a leaker." 

Dan Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who clerked for former Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2009 and 2010, said... "Some of [the Justices] might just be a little bit wary of subjecting their clerks and their staff to the kind of jurisdiction of somebody else who’s not in their chambers.... My guess is, you know, some of them would just say, ‘I will have a conversation with my clerks personally.’” ... 

“There’s no criminal statute that I know of that makes this illegal — so what’s the point in bringing outsiders in?” said Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor at George Washington University who served as a clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Speaking of Bob Woodward and the Supreme Court, I remember when his book "The Brethren" came out. So many revelations about the inner workings of the Court! Later, we found out that Justice Potter Stewart was the main source — the leaker. From the previous link (to Wikipedia):

The book's sources are highly critical of Burger as Chief Justice, especially in comparison to his predecessor, Earl Warren. Burger is described by other Justices as pompous, devious, and intellectually mediocre. The book is also critical at various points of William O. Douglas, who is portrayed as having gone from one of America's greatest jurists to a "nasty, petulant, prodigal child" who was overly political, and is also occasionally critical of another liberal stalwart, Thurgood Marshall, for his alleged intellectual laziness and apathy.

That's a lot more revealing than a draft of an opinion! What good did it do? What purpose was served?  

"Leaks can serve a really important role in helping to correct government malfeasance, to encourage government to be careful about what it does in secret and to preserve democratic processes."