You're not going to like the rest of the American political and justice system. The entire process is based on purposefully creating opposing and disagreeable forces.
The whole thing was clearly created on a principle of opposing friendships between powerful forces.
The Supreme Court is not just another legislative branch.
But that being said, have you seen how many decisions are 5-4? Or 6-3, 7-2? It does not appear that whatever friendship that existed between Scalia and Ginsburg impacted their rulings and dissents on the matters before the Court.
It's completely possible—and I say preferable—to hold starkly contrasting political or legal views, but still like one another. We need more of that. It's how we stay one cohesive nation, instead of warring factions.
(Note that this is a somewhat unusual year, as several cases were pushed from the previous term to the next term due to COVID-19--and the cases not pushed were so selected because they had more urgency, which generally means more contentious).
Most cases tend to be unanimous or nearly so (0-1 dissenters), and only about ⅓ of cases are contentious (5-4/6-3/5-3). This has been decently stable over the past few decades.
That jibes with my impression of the decisions I’ve seen. You and a sibling comment are giving me these stats and I’m not sure if that’s to refute or support my point? 1/3 of decisions being split like that is quite a bit. 1/3 being unanimous is also significant.
I guess my point is that their friendship didn’t seem to have impaired either justice’s ability to do their job with faith to their respective judicial philosophies.
You made me look it up, and it turns out I was using it correctly. But it's funny, because I had originally written "jives", then second-guessed myself and changed it to "jibes."
I had never seen the "gybes" spelling before. Is it like tire/tyre? Looks Welsh to me!
"since 2000 a unanimous decision has been more likely than any other result — averaging 36 percent of all decisions. Even when the court did not reach a unanimous judgment, the justices often secured overwhelming majorities, with 7-to-2 or 8-to-1 judgments making up about 15 percent of decisions. The 5-to-4 decisions, by comparison, occurred in 19 percent of cases"
Having followed a lot of the recent SCOTUS cases, I can say that if you think the law is leaving less room for interpretation nowadays, you are sorely mistaken. Look up the "Armed Career Criminal Act"--it's an example of what seems like it ought to be a simple matter of interpretation (look! it defines "violent felon"!) into a headache (okay, the person has to have committed a crime whose state-level common-law interpretation in 1984 had to have required at least this much force, and I'm sure I'm still missing some details there).
>It's completely possible—and I say preferable—to hold starkly contrasting political or legal views, but still like one another. We need more of that.
Disagree.
The system is confrontational; it's shaped this way so as to reduce the chance of buddy-buddy underdealings and negotiation.
The system is confrontational so as to promote fairness and prevent bias.
Creating yet another environment by which the judges can exert control over the law by winning personal favors among each other must be avoided. That's exactly why things are set up such way within the US government, Supreme Court not-withstanding.
All that said : I have never considered the supreme court to be fair and unbiased. Compromising for the sake of cooperation, sure. Effective, definitely.
> It does not appear that whatever friendship that existed between Scalia and Ginsburg impacted their rulings and dissents on the matters before the Court.
You'd never really know. That's why it should probably be well avoided.
> It's completely possible—and I say preferable—to hold starkly contrasting political or legal views, but still like one another. We need more of that. It's how we stay one cohesive nation, instead of warring factions.
This works as long as both sides are acting in good faith, and everyone involved (i.e. everyone in a society) is on more or less equal footing. If either of those conditions don't exist, fixing them is more important than maintaining the civil discourse. That's true for many reasons, and one important reason is that in those situations, insisting on the equality of reasonable political positions with unreasonable ones is an effective defense of the status quo, which makes the problems harder to fix.
Neither of these conditions exist in the USA right now, for the record.
Possible, yes. Preferable, sure. Most likely outcome, no.
The Supreme Court isn't a coffee club. The justices being on their toes and constantly being challenged by opposing ideas will lead to better outcomes. Friendship is a process of synchronisation, it sits in opposition to the best outcome for the system.
And yes, I pay a lot of attention to Supreme Court decisions.
Friendship is the process of learning about and recognizing the value of a human being that usually leads to a greater comprehension of that persons life and views not a synchronizing of those views.
A true friendship is not necessarily based on mutually-beneficial backroom deals. A sound friendship would have each party seeking to uphold and maintain the integrity of one another. To do otherwise is to reveal that it is not friendship, but rather opportunism, cronyism, or convenience - none of which have the stability or moral foundation of true friendship.
I don't think this is true. In the past people have reached across the aisle to compromise and collaborate successfully.
If your position is right, doesn't that contradict the continued existence of the United States? What's "United" about the US if it breaks down into a bunch of hostile warring tribes?
The whole thing was clearly created on a principle of opposing friendships between powerful forces.