Alito said the unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this year made the right-leaning justices on the nation’s highest court “targets for assassination.”

“The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority and (in) support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us,” he said in remarks Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation. //

Actually, the court’s legitimacy depends not on its ideological majority nor public opinion but rather adherence to fīat jūstitia ruat cælum (“let justice be done though the heavens fall.”) If there is no obeisance to law, there is inevitable chaos.

Alito’s expressed views sharply contrast with recent comments by fellow Justice Elena Kagan, whose liberal views are no secret. It doesn’t help matters when the person in a black robe sitting next to you passive-aggressively undermines court authority with insinuations.

Kagan said that on the question of legitimacy, the popularity of the court’s rulings is not the issue. Instead, she added, a “court is legitimate when it’s acting like a court,” by respecting past precedents and not asserting authority to make political or policy decisions.

“When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, once people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society, irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem,” Kagan said.

One assumes that by respecting past precedents, Kagan isn’t referring to Dred Scott v. Sanford. This means “past precedents” translates into “earlier rulings I like regardless of their legal soundness,” which means you’re judging on emotions and not law, which is not precisely what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing. But I digress.

This is the sad yet natural outgrowth of embracing feelings over facts; a view and implementation of government based on emotion and not law.