Scalia-Stevens rivalry

The Scalia-Stevens rivalry on the United States Supreme Court was an intellectual rivalry between Justice Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens, whose tenures overlapped by more than 20 years and constituted the majority of each of their service on the Court. Stevens was a Midwesterner who had served on the Seventh Circuit; Scalia was a northeasterner who was elevated from the D.C. Circuit. Both had exemplary academic backgrounds.

Examples of their rivalry can be found in their unwillingness to join each other's opinions in:

• Crawford v. Marion Cty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181 (2008) (upholding voter id., but Justice Scalia declined to join Justice Stevens' majority opinion for the Court, and Scalia concurred separately instead)
• Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010) (Justice Stevens' concurrence reads like a majority opinion that lost one vote to become a 4-person concurrence)