Everything's fine.

According to the New York Times, the justices of the Supreme Court have become our nation's most prestigious slackers:


"The court has taken about 40 percent fewer cases so far this term than last. It now faces noticeable gaps in its calendar for late winter and early spring. The December shortfall is the result of a pipeline empty of cases granted last term and carried over to this one.

"The number of cases the court decided with signed opinions last term, 69, was the lowest since 1953 and fewer than half the number the court was deciding as recently as the mid-1980s."


The possible reasons, it is said, are many:


"The federal government has been losing fewer cases in the lower courts and so has less reason to appeal. As Congress enacts fewer laws, the justices have fewer statutes to interpret... [another] theory is that the court is so closely divided that neither the liberals nor the conservatives want to risk granting a case in which, at the end of the day, they might not prevail. To grant a case takes four votes, which can be a heartbreaking distance from the five votes it takes to win. Scholars of the court call this risk-averse behavior 'defensive denial.'... there is a built-in “institutional conservatism” in which law clerks are afraid to look overly credulous and so are reluctant to recommend a grant... 'In the post-Bush v. Gore era, the court may be concerned about taking the wrong case and making an unpopular decision....'"


It is curious to see the highest court in Amerikansas sunk into such depths of depression, fear, and apathy. And the malaise is spreading:


"...a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School ... wrote on his blog that constitutional law scholars 'are kind of bored these days.'"


Reports of the Justices sitting around in their underwear, eating Cheetos, and watching reruns of Judge Judy are as yet unconfirmed, but highly credible nonetheless.

Some days two or three of them will dress in their oldest clothes, buy bottles of inexpensive Italian reds, and lay on the grass of the Potomac, laughing, telling jokes, showing each other their newest tattoos, then falling silent... one will rise to skip a stone across the iron-gray water, watch numbly as the ripples subside. They've been appointed for life, you see, reached the highest office of their profession -- now what comes next? Is this all there is? "Do you ever think about eternity?" says Scalia, staring slack-jawed at the sky. Ginsburg laughs; beer comes out her nose; everybody laughs. In the brief mood of jollity Thomas pushes the new boy into the water, but soon mirth subsides and everyone is quiet again.

The faded roar of a distant plane sounds like the echoes of a great bell.

A sense has come over them all lately that their importance has diminished, that maybe their time has ended, and the honor they fought to attain has become something worthless, a treasure too easy to discard. On the wall in the game room hangs a portrait of Andrew Jackson captioned by his famous statement: John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it! The features are peppered by holes: for years they have taken out their aggression with darts. Now his little smirk seems to mock them.