To the average political onlooker, the Supreme Court is a divisive, contentious place. Over the past few years, the bench has become the center of a back-and-forth battle between Right and Left, both politically and culturally, as each struggles to swing the court’s favor in their direction. That battle continues to get uglier.
Take, for example, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Unreliable and uncorroborated accusations of sexual assault plagued Kavanaugh’s nomination, making the surrounding debate more personal than political.
Nowadays, alt-right trolls regularly float conspiracies about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ailing health, and in 2016, liberal activists celebrated the passing of the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
Luckily, there are at least nine people who see the bench as something more than a political sledgehammer. It’s an institution and an important one. But it’s also an opportunity for friendship, says Ginsburg.
“Everybody I’ve served with on the court I’ve regarded as a friend. Some were closer than others, but I didn’t consider myself an enemy of any of them,” she said back in 2013.
This week, Ginsburg offered an ode to her late friend Scalia, who was worth much more than his judicial opinions, she said.
“Justice Scalia and I became friends when we were buddies on the D.C. Circuit,” she said. “What did I love most about him? His infectious sense of humor. When we were three judges on the Court of Appeals, he would sometimes whisper something to me. It would crack me up. It was all I could do to contain hysterical laughter.
“We had much in common,” she continued. “True, our styles were very different. But both of us cared a lot about writing opinions that at least other judges and lawyers would understand.”
Scalia would fix her grammar, never in front of their colleagues so as not to embarrass her, Ginsburg explained, and she in turn would offer stylistic suggestions that he “never, ever followed.” He was bombastic while Ginsburg was much more reserved, and their views on the Constitution and the role of the court differed greatly. And yet.
There’s more to a person than politics or matters of the law. As Scalia once put it, “If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake.” This understanding — that animosity and controversy will undermine the legitimacy and purpose of the court — has preserved its jurisprudence all these years.
If only the partisans on both sides of the political aisle understood what Ginsburg so clearly does: Respectful debate strengthens political opinions, no matter how polarized they might be.
