Sigh, it's bad enough listening to lawyers play at this game of rigor/formality/objectivity, so it's even more tiresome to listen to others make their excuses/apologies for them. Lawyers and judges ARE politicians, not some scholars or scientists, and our courts do a bunch of batshit arbitrary stuff every day. Appealing to facts and "words mean things" and defending the profession as even meaningfully skilled, much less noble, seems silly these days when you take a look at most stuff in the real world. Roe v Wade comes to mind here- there's no esoteric and learned moral calculus going on, and we see that precedent matters only up until it does not. Judges invent the rules and ignore them when convenient. At least the other opinion engineers and spin doctors in society aren't as hypocritical about it. The outcome of this case is probably already decided, and the rest is theater..