There's Someting in the Water

Dahlia Lithwick has some theories about what makes conservative Supreme Court Justices mellow into moderate- to liberal-minded jurists with age. (Your Honors O'Connor and Kennedy, we are looking at you.) Since some hardasses do not mellow or open their minds or outgrow their bigotry or become even a little tolerant (ahem, Your Honors Thomas and Scalia), we doubt that there is really a phenomenon of mellowing going on over at the Supreme Court, but this sounds about as good as any theory you're likely to come up with:

Scalia's "acerbic comments on his colleagues' work," and his general tendency to run with constitutional scissors, ultimately drove both O'Connor and Kennedy to form alliances with the court's liberals.

As we've said before, Scalia is our favorite judge, but we can see how his brute force could drive justices of lesser mettle into the awkward, dorky, but benign embraces of Souter and Breyer.