The Supreme Court's Pain -- and Our Anger by Linda Greenhouse
'In January 2001, the Supreme Court was hurting. Thirty-six days after Election Day, on Dec. 12, 2000, the justices had divided 5 to 4 in its vote that stopped the Florida recount and effectively called the presidential election for the Republican candidate, George W. Bush.
In the ensuing weeks, with the court in a monthlong winter recess, justices on both sides of Bush v. Gore fanned out across the world to reassure the public, and perhaps themselves, that normal life at the Supreme Court would resume.
“If you can’t disagree without hating each other, you better find another profession,” Justice Antonin Scalia told a group of law students in San Diego on Jan. 23. The justice, whose side had prevailed, assured the students: “Trust me, there was no bitterness at the court after the decision was made.”
Speaking at the University of Kansas on Jan. 25, Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the four dissenters, insisted that the decision had reflected neither ideology nor politics, but simply competing legal views. “When you’re talking about the judicial system, what you’re talking about is people carrying on a discourse completely informed and civilized,” he said. He quoted a statement Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the Bush v. Gore majority, had made the day after the ruling: “I can’t remember an instance in conference when anyone has raised their voice in anger.”
And in Melbourne, Australia, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom the decision had infuriated, adopted a measured tone in addressing a law school audience. “Whatever final judgment awaits Bush v. Gore in the annals of history,” she said, “I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair.”
Two decades later, as a new Supreme Court term begins, the court is hurting again. The majority’s refusal a month ago to prevent Texas from shutting down access to legal abortion while lower courts weigh challenges to the state’s bizarre vigilante law — a law paused yesterday night by a federal judge — has once again turned a harsh public spotlight on a 5-to-4 division among the justices. And once again members of the court have taken to the road in defense of the institution’s ability to render impartial justice.
But there is a difference. The justices’ defensiveness comes with an edge. The conservatives appear to have deflected any impulse toward self-examination to a critique of how the media has covered the court’s recent actions. The problem isn’t the court, in other words; it’s those who presume to explain the court to the public.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/opinion/supreme-court-polls-abortion-bush-gore.html
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