I would highly recommend you read Jeff Toobin’s profile of Justice John Paul Stevens in the New Yorker. But one quote really stuck out, and I thought it may be of interest.

Even Stevens’s manners at oral argument are not entirely the result of Midwestern politeness. “You want to be sure to get it in,” he said. “The bench is a little more active than it was years ago. You’ve got four or five Justices who are very active.” Is that a good thing? “I’m not a Clarence Thomas, but I think a little more permission to the lawyers to develop their own argument would be better than the way it does develop.”

Understatement of the decade, no doubt 🙂