The Supremes and Shared Purpose

The Supremes and Shared Purpose

By: David W. Burleigh

  The last time you had a vigorous disagreement with someone in your family, what happened? Did you become exasperated? Did you keep track of who “won” and who “lost”? Did you count votes? Did you get so mad you decided not to talk to the other person for a long time? Did you plot revenge? 

  Most important, did you have a sense that a shared purpose was at stake? In the disagreement, did you sense that you and the other person were serving a larger purpose beyond yourselves? Or were you fighting with only yourself in mind?

  Family ownership involves conflict. So, for that matter, does simply being in a family. The conflict is inevitable. Every person in a family is imperfect, so conflict is not surprising. Conflict should not be seen as a sign of “dysfunction,” as though something were wrong with your family. Conflict is just part of life.

  The key question is: does your family resolve conflict with reference to a shared purpose – a common purpose that is larger than the ends of any one family member? Families that have a shared purpose frame their disagreements with respect to that purpose. Families that have no shared purpose frame their disagreements in terms of individual ends, and nothing larger.

  A remarkable illustration of shared purpose comes at the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Just weeks before her death, a book was published about her former colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia. The book notes, “Some of Scalia's closest friends on the Court were colleagues with whom he vigorously disagreed at times.” To exemplify this point, a third Supreme Court justice, Justice Elena Kagan, wrote the book's foreward. Justice Scalia could be described as steadfastly conservative. Justice Kagan could be described as steadfastly liberal. Yet Justice Kagan uses the foreward not to bash Scalia but to evaluate him according to a shared purpose. Admitting to “exasperation” at times when reading Scalia's draft opinions, and making clear she disagreed with him on various issues, Kagan nonetheless concludes that Scalia “will go down in history as one of the most significant, and also one of the greatest, Supreme Court justices.”

  The book goes on to describe the long-standing, genuine friendship between Scalia and Justice Ginsburg. As a former clerk of Scalia relates:

As I got up to leave Justice Scalia's chambers, he pointed to

two dozen roses on his table and noted that he needed to take

them down to 'Ruth' for her birthday. 'Wow,' I said, 'I doubt

I have given a total of twenty-four roses to my wife in almost

thirty years of marriage.' 'You ought to try it sometime,' he

retorted. Unwilling to give him the last word, I pushed back:

'So what good have all these roses done for you? Name one

five-four case of any significance where you got Justice Ginsburg's

vote.' 'Some things,' he answered, 'are more important than votes.'

   The relationships among Justices Ginsburg, Scalia, and Kagan exemplify a shared purpose of the highest order. The three of them did not agree on every case, and in some respects they did not agree on how to be a judge. One might even say they disagreed for a living. Yet their sense of common ownership of their work, their awareness of their work as being subject to a purpose greater than each of them, and their decision not to let disagreements hijack friendship, left them able to move through time together and not irreparably separated. 

  If three people as opinionated as Justices Ginsburg, Scalia and Kagan could work together collegially in one enterprise according to a shared purpose, there is hope for your family. The question is: do you have a shared purpose? If so, what is it, and how does your decision-making implement it?

   If you haven't looked honestly at whether you have a shared purpose, how much longer will you wait?

Source: The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum 2020).