@AdamLiptak Too Notes Change in J. Scalia Demeanor

Fresh Air:

On how Justice Scalia’s dissent in the marriage equality decision mocked Justice Kennedy

That’s a another trend this term: The level of personal ad hominem animus, just personal insult — particularly from Scalia, but not only from Scalia — was really extraordinary this term, and you saw a kind of change in Justice Scalia, who, it must be said, in his earlier years was a towering legal figure and a vivid writer and sometimes a snarky writer, but a man who single-handedly transformed areas of American law. And now he seems to have turned a corner and is just spewing a kind of “get off my lawn” kind of bile that doesn’t obviously advance his jurisprudential cause. He seems very angry.

As I’ve said earlier, it’s not just the longstanding sarcasm. There’s been a change in both the nature and frequency of the most gratuitous insults. I can’t think of anything else like his statement that he would “hide his head in a bag” rather than sign the Kennedy same sex marriage opinion.

Maybe all the Justices are getting snippier as a result.  I was somewhat surprised at the “What chumps!” in the Roberts AZ redistricting dissent. And Justice Kagan, while she writes beautifully and clearly, has been veering in the sarcasm direction. But Scalia is off the charts qualitatively and quantitatively.

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