Scalia and his 'nastygrams' to colleagues on SCOTUS

Natl Law Journal

How Do Supreme Court Justices Manage to Get Along?
Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal

When a colleague says he would rather "hide my head in a bag" than agree with something you've written, how can you possibly face each other the next day?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said those words about Justice Anthony Kennedy's landmark opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges on Friday. He added for good measure that by embracing Kennedy's lofty writings about liberty, the high court had descended to "the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie."

On Thursday, with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. sitting inches away, Scalia attacked the chief's majority opinion in King v. Burwell, which endorsed the Obama administration's reading of the Affordable Care Act. Scalia accused the court of "interpretive somersaults" and suggested the law be renamed "SCOTUScare" to reflect the double rescue, by the court and Roberts, of the health law.

What law clerks and justices have called Scalia's "nastygrams" are not new. But he has fired off enough of them in recent weeks, targeting conservative allies and liberal foes alike, that some may wonder how the justices can possibly work together—and whether the 79-year-old Scalia is so frustrated with his colleagues that he might quit the court.

But former law clerks and the justices themselves have said that in spite of Scalia's sharp rhetoric and harsh words among other justices in decisions and dissents, the nine members of the court manage to come back the next day remarkably able to carry on without bruised feelings or animosities.

. ...

A ‘respectful’ dissent, sometimes

According to Joan Biskupic's 2009 biography of Scalia, the justice in 1996 told friends he was thinking of retiring after years of losing "just about every case that mattered to him," including Romer v. Evans, an early gay rights case. In his Romer dissent, Scalia accused the court of signing on to the "so-called homosexual agenda."
But no one seems to think now that Scalia is interested in leaving after nearly 30 years on the high court—partly because he said in 2012 he would be "a fool" to leave the court and be replaced "by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I've tried to do." Translation: not while President Barack Obama is in office.

In addition Scalia, who once said dissents made life worth living, seems to have worked his way out of his funk—in part by writing potent dissents, filled with sarcasm and adorned with phrases that send readers to their dictionaries.

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