Justice Breyer: ‘I Have Never Heard One Member Of Our Court Say Something Insulting About Another’ [VIDEO]

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said on Monday that he has “never heard one member of our court say something insulting about another, not even as a joke.”

Breyer, appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” explained that the Supreme Court’s “discussion is professional, it is serious, and it is not personal, and we are good friends despite the fact that we agree some of the time and we disagree others of the time.”

Stephen Colbert: Let’s talk about disagreeing for a second. You go to work every day and manage to get your job done with a group of nine people, half of whom will disagree with you vehemently on a host of different issues. How come you guys manage to keep doing your job and the rest of the government can’t?

Stephen Breyer: When we’re sitting around that table…

Colbert: Yeah?

Breyer: That’s a good question. I don’t know about leave the rest of the government out of it, but I will say when we’re sitting around the table, the nine of us discussing, I have been there over 20 years, 21, I have never heard a voice raised in anger. I have never heard one member of our court say something insulting about another, not even as a joke. Of course, we disagree. We disagree about half the time. We’re unanimous about half the time and we’re 5-4, and not always the same four, maybe 20% or so, and we feel it possibly quite strongly, but the discussion is professional, it is serious, and it is not personal, and we are good friends despite the fact that we agree some of the time and we disagree others of the time.

Colbert: You’re yelling at me right now. You’re yelling at me right now.

Breyer just released his book, “The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities.”

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