Amy Coney Barrett Reveals 'Preschool' Rules Followed by SCOTUS Justices to Keep Deliberations Civil

I've often wondered what Supreme Court deliberations on hot-button cases might be like, with perhaps Neil Gorsuch on one end of the spectrum and Sonia Sotomayor on the other. Raised voices? Sharp tongues? Even screaming and yelling? According to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, none of the above.

During a Tuesday panel discussion at George Washington University that included Justices Barrett and Sotomayor, Barrett explained the justices’ rules for deliberating cases. Are those rules complicated? On the contrary, the panel moderator good-naturedly described them as "really good preschool" rules. Barrett explained:

We don’t speak in a hot way at our conferences. We don’t raise our voices no matter how hot-button the case. We always speak with respect.
There’s a norm for how we speak, Chief Justice begins because he’s the most senior, and you go around in a circle. Most senior down to most junior, and you say what you think about the case, and the norm is that you cannot interrupt the other person.
So we hear everybody out and it’s not until everybody has spoken that there then can be some back and forth. We do not interrupt one another, and we never raise [our] voices.

Barrett added that there is assigned seating at lunch, leading the panel moderator to say that the rules sounded like “really good preschool" rules, to laughter.

As I transcribed the above block quote, I thought about Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee testimony of Special Counsel Rober Hur and damn near laughed out loud as I contrasted the sophomoric behavior of serial-lying California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, Texas Democrat "genius" Sheila Jackson Lee, and Missouri Democrat and Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush.

Barrett continued, talking about how the justices “work very hard to maintain those norms,” which she believes have been “successful.” Sotomayor agreed:

Generally, one of our senior colleagues will call the person who was perceived to maybe have gotten a little close and tell them, maybe you should think of an apology or patching it up a little bit. It happens in writing. Occasionally, someone writes something that an individual feels is offensive — and not just explanatory.
All of these things are ways to manage emotion without losing respect for one another and without losing an understanding that each of us is operating in good faith. And I think the public discourse has lost some of that.

Who knew?

The Bottom Line

I find the behind-the-scenes SCOTUS revelation somewhat remarkable, given the bitter divisiveness on Capitol Hill and in the minds of Joe Biden and his handlers.

On the other hand, given today's reality of the so-called "uniparty," I'm convinced that the majority of congressional Democrats and Republicans regularly laugh and slap one another on the back as they continue to screw the American people. Sound cynical? Damn right, I am.