The Supreme Court is expected to speak through opinions, orders, and the institutional habits of judging. Recent remarks by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Clarence Thomas suggest the Court’s internal divisions are spilling more openly into public view.

Sotomayor publicly apologized after comments about Justice Kavanaugh that she later described as inappropriate and hurtful. Jackson used a Yale Law School lecture to condemn the Court’s growing use of the emergency docket, calling its effect on the judicial system corrosive. Thomas, speaking at the University of Texas, delivered a forceful defense of the Declaration’s first principles while attacking progressivism as a threat to them.

The respective extrajudicial commentary did not arise from a single case. That said, they do reveal a Court whose internal disagreements are increasingly no longer confined to opinions and oral arguments.