SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK: Alito, Sotomayor at odds over World Series

SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK: Justices split on Series

WASHINGTON — He’s a right-leaning New Jersey native with a lifelong love of the Phillies. She’s a liberal New Yorker who grew up near Yankee Stadium. They’re eying each other warily these days from opposite ends of the Supreme Court bench.

Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor make no secret of their rooting interests in the World Series, though neither would say whether they have a wager on the outcome.

Alito was unusually quiet when the court met Monday. Was he glum over the ninth-inning meltdown by Phillies closer Brad Lidge in the team’s loss Sunday night?

He was more verbal Tuesday, asking questions a day after his team won Game 5 to send the Series back to New York.

When the court met Tuesday morning, Sotomayor was pugnacious. “Now, you’re trying to confuse the issue,” she told a lawyer at one point.

Was she taking out her disappointment over Yankee starting pitcher A.J. Burnett’s atrocious outing Monday night?

The court hears arguments again Wednesday and the justices hold a private conference later in the day. They’ll finish long before the teams take the field for Game 6.

Lesson 93 in Justice Antonin Scalia’s book on lawyering is “treasure simplicity.” Fourteen pages later, he and co-author Bryan Garner advise lawyers to “learn how to handle a difficult judge.”

Both points came into play in court on Tuesday.

A lawyer for a seller of cigarettes over the Internet was describing something as “inchoate,” or not yet fully formed.

It would not be considered property “until it became choate,” said the lawyer, Randolph Barnhouse.

The justices usually ask questions, but this time Scalia had a comment.

“There is no such adjective. I know we have used it, but there is no such adjective as ‘choate.’ There is ‘inchoate,’ but the opposite of ‘inchoate’ is not ‘choate,’” Scalia said.

Barnhouse was eager to move on. Lawyers get just 30 minutes to make their argument, including frequent interruptions from the justices.

But Scalia was not ready to let it go.

“Any more than the, I don’t know,” he said, searching for the right word.

Lesson learned, Barnhouse indicated. “Well, I’m wrong on the, on the,” he began.

Scalia found it. “Exactly. Yes. It’s like ‘gruntled,’” he said.

Barnhouse persisted: “But I think I am right on the law, Your Honor.”

But Scalia wasn’t focusing on the law. He was going to finish his English lesson. “Exactly. ‘Disgruntled,’” he said, adding that some people mistakenly assume that “the opposite of ‘disgruntled” is ‘gruntled.’”

A month into the new term, the justices have yet to hand down any opinions and won’t do so this week. This is not unusual.

But because the court heard an important campaign finance case in September, interest groups across the political spectrum are alerting their members and reporters that a decision could be imminent.

Such information is closely held at the court and there is never advance word that the decision in a particular case will be announced on a certain day.

There are two more occasions before Thanksgiving when decisions are possible: Tuesday, Nov. 10, and Monday, Nov. 16.