Today the Supreme Court decided one of its rare cases of original jurisdiction, a suit tried in the Court itself (though with the arguments mostly filtered through the work of a “special master” appointed by the justices). In New Jersey v. Delaware, if I may oversimplify the issues, the Court decided that Delaware’s sovereign power over the uses of the Delaware River extends right up to the New Jersey shore, and that Delaware may therefore veto the construction of certain industrial facilities jutting into the river that New Jersey wishes to permit on its shore.

I am not one to impute to the justices a spirit of hometown favoritism for its own sake. But I do find it interesting that the only dissenters in this 6-2 case are the two justices–Scalia and Alito–born in the Garden State.

Or perhaps I noticed this as a gleeful native son of the First State myself.