Legal News

?Will It Ever Be the Same?? Justices Wring Hands Over New Kid in Class

By Ashby Jones

In this political era of deep and divided partisanship, we really do admire and respect the fact that the Supreme Court justices seem to get along so swimmingly. But we’ve got to admit that we found some of the justices’ comments in this WaPo article, ever the tiniest bit weird.

The topic presented to the justices during a broadcast on C-SPAN: Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s recent arrival as the court’s newest member.

Responses, according to the WaPo article, were as follows:

Chief Justice John Roberts: “To some extent, it’s unsettling. You quickly get to view the court as . . . composed of these members, and it becomes kind of hard to think of it as involving anyone else. I suspect it’s like [how] people look at their families.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy: “It’s stressful for us because we so admire our colleagues. We wonder, oh, will it ever be the same?”

Justice Clarence Thomas: “As far as the composition of the court, you’re bringing in basically — and this word can be overused — you’re bringing in a family member. It changes the whole family. . . . You have to start all over. The chemistry is different.”

Part of us wants to shake each of the justices by the shoulders, like a scolding parent, and tell them to buck up, snap out of it, life’s going to go on! Then again, we suppose we’ve got to allow for the fact that the justices are, in fact, much closer than one might imagine, based only on what we the public sees: oral arguments and written opinions.

Said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the WaPo: “I would say you will be surprised by the high level of collegiality here. This term, I think we divided 5 to 4 in almost one-third of all the cases. One might get a false impression on that degree of disagreement.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).