Dissents from the bench: A Supreme Court tradition missing during Covid

The Covid pandemic deprived the Supreme Court of its courtroom for oral arguments, its intimate conference room for deliberations and, as is evident these days, the bench where dissenting justices can vent.

At the end of each Supreme Court session, individual justices on the losing side of a case often find that a written dissent is not enough. They feel compelled to read excerpts from the tall mahogany bench and rhetorically grab courtroom spectators by the collar to convince them of the majority's wrongheadedness.