At the Washington Examiner, Adam White and Adam Gustafson discuss the contentious nature of the Supreme Court's recent term and look ahead at upcoming cases. They write:
Just three months ago, the Supreme Court ended its annual term with three of the most explosive cases in recent memory. It almost always ends its year with a bang, having saved its most controversial, deeply divided cases for last.
But this year, the cases decided in late June were even more contentious and politically heated than usual. [...]
The justices' heated exchanges did not stop when the cases closed. Days after the term ended, Ginsburg told NPR's Nina Totenberg that she and her fellow liberal justices had arrived upon a strategy of speaking as a bloc in dissent, whenever possible, so as to maximize their legal and political impact. "If you want to make sure you're read, you do it together, and you do it short," she said, before asking, rhetorically, "why each of the [conservative] prime dogs found it necessary to do his own thing."
Justice Samuel Alito told The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol that decisions like the same-sex marriage case threaten to "rais[e] questions of legitimacy," making the court look more political and thus turning the Senate confirmation process into something more "like an election. It will become like a political process."