The Ballad of Antonin and Ruth

How two New Yorkers, fiercely opposed on the bench, found abiding friendship on the U.S. Supreme Court // “What’s not to like…except her views of the law, of course?”

Former U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were a seemingly odd pair. They attended the opera, shopped, vacationed, and spent free time together. Their deep, abiding friendship and mutual respect were well-known in Washington, and the deaths of both judges produced a flurry of reflections on their relationship.¹

But Scalia was a conservative champion, and Ginsburg a liberal one. Scalia was nominated by President Reagan, Ginsburg by President Clinton. If one wrote the opinion of the court, you could be sure to find the other drawing blood in their sharp dissenting opinion. And yet they loved each other personally, and respected each other professionally:

…when President Clinton was mulling over his first nomination to the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia was asked: "If you were stranded on a desert island with your new Court colleague, who would you prefer, Larry Tribe or Mario Cuomo?" Scalia answered quickly and distinctly: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg."²

So how were they friends? Why were they friends? These kinds of questions, and their answers, and can be used by New Yorkers and Americans to create an increasingly perfect civic society and body politic.

Ginsburg on left with fan, Scalia on right in blue and black; image.

Don’t overthink this—they were friends for understandable reasons

When I tell the story of Ginsburg/Scalia (or “Scalia/Ginsburg,” if you’re talking about the opera), some people have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. They wonder how two individuals with such differing legal philosophies could be good friends. They imagine themselves trying to have a friendship like that, and it seems like a constant, bitter fight. As a result, they often dismiss those kinds of friendships, often as a kind of lack of principle. “They wouldn’t be friends if they stuck to their guns,” or something like that.

This analysis is as superficial as it is unimaginative, and points to a quality of the observer more than to friendships like Ginsburg/Scalia. If you look at their lives, the friendship makes sense.

Common interest, common experience

Both justices grew up in New York City, both came from modest backgrounds, both were wildly brilliant, both attended top-tier law schools, and both went into the same line of work. In their personal lives, they both enjoyed opera, shopping, traveling, and more—which they often did together.³

Prior to serving on the Supreme Court, they served side-by-side on the D.C. Circuit Court—Ginsburg from 1980 to 1993, and Scalia from 1982 to 1986.

Although their lives were not the same, they overlapped in fundamental ways. If you have an atypical set of life experiences, it is often easiest to relate to others who have had those experiences, even if they’re personally different. Very few people understand the experience of being a Supreme Court justice.

Common dedication

Scalia and Ginsburg were dedicated to the American constitutional order, even as they had different—but overlapping—interpretations of it. They valued a Court that engaged in spirited discussion, that was not uniform in thought, and that worked together to create the best possible opinion:

One case, United States v. Virginia (1996), highlights the supreme besties at their very best. Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion, holding that a state university’s exclusion of women violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. This case was the culmination of Ginsburg’s earlier work as an advocate seeking to topple laws based on sex stereotypes that ultimately harmed women. Scalia dissented, but he shared a draft of his “very spicy” and “searing” dissent (as Ginsburg later called it) with his BFF—a habit that went back to their days serving together on the D.C. Circuit. In Ginsburg’s estimation, seeing the weaknesses Scalia identified in her opinion allowed her to sharpen her arguments, making the majority opinion stronger and more persuasive.⁴

Here’s Ginsburg recalling the same case:

In my treasure trove of memories, an early June morning, 1996. I was about to leave the Court to attend the Second Circuit Judicial Conference at Lake George. Justice Scalia entered, papers in his hand. Tossing many pages on my desk, he said: “Ruth, this is the penultimate draft of my dissent in the VMI [Virginia Military Institute] case. It’s not yet in shape to circulate to the Court, but I want to give you as much time as I can to answer it.” On the plane to Albany, I read the dissent. It was a zinger…Thinking about fitting responses consumed my weekend, but I was glad to have the extra days to adjust the Court's opinion. My final draft was much improved thanks to Justice Scalia's searing criticism.”⁵

This particular way of dealing with deep intellectual division in the context of broader architectonic alignment is the exact manifestation of John Stuart Mill’s great declaration in On Liberty (emphasis added):

…the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.⁶

Or, in the language of a great poster, Visa:

Goo for my prickly friends

Prickles for my gooey friends

These two judges were more than their legal opinions though. Their friendship was larger than that. What about superseding reverence for the constitution? What about the rare, shared experience of the federal bench? What about the broad range of shared interests? What about the regular contact of a work colleague on top of all this?

The friendship of Scalia and Ginsburg is not a “feel good” story—it is an achievement

One can read a story like this and get a feeling of warm fuzzies—indeed, it is often written about that way. That is not what I’m doing here. If you zoom in on the concrete reality of Ginsburg and Scalia, you would see vicious attack and counterattack in their opinions. They sharply disagreed, and they did not moderate or back down from their convictions; but it was exactly their mutual adherence to this personal integrity, married to the common goal of the American constitutional order, that produced the best work from both of them. I don’t think they would have respected each other if either had put away their blade for a second.

The ability to do this civilizationally load-bearing work—while disagreeing, while remaining close friends—is a mark of competence, self-control, and “eye on the prize” mentality. They both kept the terminal goal of American constitutionality front and center, and worked together from their different operational perspectives to jointly buttress it.

If you cannot think of someone you deeply admire, who otherwise has a radically different worldview or politics from you, then probably one of two things is going on:

1. You have not encountered enough of the world, and so haven’t yet had the opportunity of learning from someone who is critically different from you (either in person, or through a medium like books).

2. You have deliberately blinded yourself to the excellence that exists everywhere, and you do not allow yourself to see it unless it’s a mirror reflection.

A concrete, touching example of this from Matt Bateman:

Today is James Baldwin’s 100th birthday. It’s hard for me to put to words how he’s influenced me. I started reading him in high school. I didn’t and don’t share his politics or worldview. But I fell in love with him; he’s in my very small personal pantheon. He’s a novelist, but most of all he’s a master essayist who brings to his essays a novelist’s understanding of moral psychology and the human condition. If I had to sum up what I’ve gained from him, it’s something like: he offered me a masterclass in introspection.

There is a whole craft and skill to discerning who shares your terminal goals (love of the game), but who just wears a different jersey. An even harder game: who wears a different jersey, and might come to appreciate the game as you do? The hardest game: have you proven to yourself that you would exchange jerseys, if it was for the better of the game itself?

So you’re saying we have to be friends with our enemies?

No. That’s not the point at all. My point is: you might be misunderstanding who your enemies are in the first place, and your lack of skill and social discernment is the reason you dislike them, not vice on their part.

A wire of insufficient gauge regards a strong electrical current as its enemy, because it will be burned to a singe. A stronger, properly gauged wire carries electricity to the nation, and lights our homes and businesses.

Similarly, a discerning, tolerant, curious person will regard a forceful interlocutor as a potential benefit and team member, not a force of personal destruction.

You are not automatically capable of being friends with anyone. The path of least resistance is to be friends only with those who are exactly the same as you; but this is stasis. The path of greatest benefit is those who share your same overarching values, who will join you in discovering new heights and amending your mutual understanding of the world as you go along. It takes personal fortitude, self-esteem, and confidence to sustain a friendship with a different, virtuously demanding kind of person—but the benefits are immense.

“But Daniel—the other side wants to destroy everything we love! We can’t tolerate that, you have to draw a line somewhere.”

Of course you have to draw a line somewhere—the paradox of tolerance is that, at some point, you would tolerate your own destruction. But here’s the thing: I often get this argument from people who have never once tried to understand their “other side” as much as they wish their “other side” would try to understand them.

In most circumstances, this is an indication that the person has not really tried, and they want to immediately jump to dismissing people as “other” or “irredeemable.” This kind of person uses the existence of a limit on tolerance as an excuse to abandon it, and the treasures that lay beyond it, altogether.

And with regard to politics specifically: most people do not understand how government and law work, external appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. And yet they draw battle lines based on that, instead of the verifiable personal conduct, achievement, and social track record of family, friends, and community members.

You probably already work together with people you don’t like

If someone doesn’t think they would ever work with someone who disagrees with them the way Scalia and Ginsburg disagreed with each other, well: they probably already do, but in ways that are less honorable.

How many people work jobs they hate, for managers they don’t respect, with colleagues they deplore, for a company they would leave without a second thought? Plenty do—and for the sake of this argument I will limit my argument to those in high paying professions, although I think it applies broadly.

These people will gladly work for entities, and with people, they dislike, and they will do it for a paycheck they could get elsewhere.

But they would not ascend to the greater plane of personal development and domain mastery that would allow them to work with others very different from themselves.

And they resist the idea that they could do the same, or at least try it out, for the betterment of their city, state, and nation. They don’t even stop to think that it’s worth it, or that they could get beyond despising their collaborators to the elevated back-and-forth of Ginsburg and Scalia.

Our history has countless examples of the great alloyed friendship, and almost every great national achievement has been the result of it. That is America. It is embedded in the very heart of our nation and our several states: the lateral separation of powers at the federal level, the vertical separation of powers between the states and the national government, and the guarantee of freedom of expression to work through all our differences.

Again, I’m not saying you have to be friends with everyone, or work with everyone. Rather that you’d be missing out if you had no large capacity to work with others, and that it would have negative, cascading consequences for your social group. This is how echo chambers are created, and bad tribes emerge:

And while Antonin and Ruth were clearly of different political parties and judicial philosophies, their lesson doesn’t just apply across inter-group fault lines, but intra-group fault lines. Can you build a big tent? Do you have the fortitude to stand up to those who would tear it down, leaving you all homeless? Will you invite others in from the cold?

Conclusions

Identifying your own architectonic goals in life, and what you value, is a difficult process. It requires skill and constant attention throughout your entire life. But if you are a willing steward of this process, you’ll find it easier to identify others who are similarly conscientious, even if they’re superficially very different.

My own goals are: truth, truth-seeking, understanding how things are. Working for the flourishing of my nation, my state, and my city. For my friends, family, and fellow citizens.

If you are wedded to the American constitutional order, and desire the flourishing of it and New York City and State, I am your friend, and you are mine.

Excelsior.

1. Just Google “Scalia and Ginsburg friendship”

2. Eulogy for Justice Antonin Scalia - March 1, 2016, delivered by Justice Ginsburg.

3. See their biographies: Ginsburg and Scalia

4. “What we can learn from Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s friendship,” Pacific Legal Foundation (February 2022).

5. Eulogy for Justice Antonin Scalia, see above.

6. John Stuart Mill, “Chapter 2: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion,” On Liberty (1859).