"the nation’s often ferocious political competition, although framed by the Constitution, should be lubricated by prudence, whereby ferocity is tempered by a statesmanlike refusal to exercise every power the Constitution grants."
"Republican senators correctly say that Senate Democrats, given a comparable opportunity, would behave with identical loutishness. Most Republicans argue, like kindergartners, that this justifies their behavior."
"Public confidence in the court’s disinterestedness is the source of its power to defend the Constitution from willful and imprudent majorities, including Senate majorities."
"Confidence in the court is as perishable as the reputations of the senators of both parties who in the next few years might cause the court to be seen as just another scuffed and soiled plaything in the nation’s increasingly tawdry political game. If so, the Republicans among those senators will be able to see the monument to their careers when they look east from the Capitol’s Senate wing, across First Street NE, to the court’s glistening white building, where a liberal majority will be presiding on a lengthened bench for a long time."
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hypocrisy-and-constitutional-etiquette/2020/09/21/02d06ae0-fc1c-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html