Legal experts tend to be lawyers and judges. These are people who have invested their life in the court system and who want to believe in it. Especially the the Supreme Court... they have this idea that irregardless of the people playing the roles there is something about the institution that is noble and ... bending the arc of history and all that.
So, when it fails them. When it's petty and driven by personal interest they keep being shocked...
@futurebird My fear is that we're reaching the end game for the FedSoc court packing experiment. That Roberts & co. sensing that the jig is up, will decide to give up on "institutional credibility," loot what they can, and burn everything else to the ground.
@futurebird As a counterpoint I often find that experts in any field are less cynical than laypeople. Perhaps it's because they're invested in the domain, but it's also because they seen how it functions in detail.
E.g. in science, I see all the failures of the system, but I also see that most people are pretty honest and committed to the basic principles.
I imagine it's similar in the US legal system. (But it is a little hard to hold on to that belief looking at the current goings on).
@futurebird It's all just people. Some of them have expertise that you or I lack, but they aren't categorically different from you or I (or anyone we know).
I want the institution to be noble, but there's nothing that says it has to be.