WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court decided an Indiana abortion case last month with an unsigned, three-page compromise opinion that had something for both conservative and liberal justices to like.

They quarreled anyway. It's been that way a lot this term.

"Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg's dissent ... makes little sense," Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a footnote to a 20-page concurrence. He said the state's regulation of fetal remains disposal, which the court upheld, does not burden the "mother's right to abort that (already aborted) child."

"Justice Thomas's footnote displays more heat than light," Ginsburg responded, adding pointedly that "a woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a 'mother.'"

What the public sees of the Supreme Court is mostly above-the-belt – literally and figuratively. When the justices rise to leave the bench, Thomas often extends a hand to Ginsburg, who at 86 walks carefully while recovering from lung cancer.

But in their written opinions and dissents, things have gotten a bit snippy.

The court's four liberals have displayed irritation at its new, more conservative majority – including once in the middle of the night. And some of the five conservatives are showing impatience with the incremental pace of change.

"We are seeing more expression of frustration and anger from the justices this term," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.

The high court has been through other periods of fear and loathing, particularly after its December 2000 ruling that handed the presidency to George W. Bush. This time, ill tempers are colliding with Chief Justice John Roberts's effort to lower the temperature following last fall's contentious confirmation of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh's predecessor, Anthony Kennedy, was the last in a series of unpredictable justices whose votes often proved decisive, giving the court a sense of balance it lacks today.

"That enabled the court to look as though it was not owned by one side or another and was indeed impartial and neutral and fair," Associate Justice Elena Kagan said during an appearance at Princeton University on the eve of Kavanaugh's confirmation. Going forward, she said: "It's not so clear whether we’ll have it."

'Peeks behind the curtain'

The issue that has kept the justices up at night feuding the most this term is nothing new: capital punishment.

Death-row petitions frequently arrive at the 11th hour as lawyers try to save their clients from execution. Sometimes the battle is over the risks of lethal injection. Other times, it's about the prisoner's physical or mental health. This term, even the process of giving last rites has raised tempers.

When the court ruled 5-4 in February to permit a Muslim inmate's execution in Alabama without allowing an imam to provide spiritual support in the execution chamber, Kagan wrote for the liberals that the decision was "profoundly wrong." Commentators on both sides of the ideological spectrum denounced the court's decision.

In March, the court reversed itself and granted a Buddhist prisoner in Texas his request for his own spiritual adviser. More than six weeks later, the justices were still feuding over it: Associate Justice Samuel Alito issued a 14-page dissent, while Kavanaugh explained his approval for the second time.

In April, the court denied another Alabama prisoner's effort to delay his execution because his request for lethal gas, rather than injection, came too late. So angry was Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, the court's leading death penalty opponent, that his dissent for the four liberals arrived at 2:30 a.m. He said he had asked to discuss the case the next morning at the justices' regular conference.

By the time Breyer had vented his frustration, the clock had run out on the state's authority to carry out the execution. A new execution date was set for May 30, and the prisoner was killed after the justices again divided 5-4.

“Those are things that are sort of peeks behind the curtain,” said Ian Gershengorn, former principal deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department. “To court watchers, that seems significant.”

The push-and-pull between conservatives concerned about delayed justice and liberals seeking to protect prisoners' rights has been more pronounced than usual. But death penalty cases have been the court's Achilles heel for years.

“You are adding exhaustion and time pressures to an already emotionally sensitive and politically volatile issue," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "It’s not surprising, then, that from time to time, tempers will fray."

'Writing on the wall'

This term, tempers have frayed on a variety of issues, from workers' rights to the sanctity of Supreme Court precedents.

In April, the court voted 5-4 along ideological lines to block workers from banding together in arbitration disputes.

The four liberal justices were so incensed that each wrote a separate dissent. Their feud with Roberts' majority opinion featured what Scott Nelson of Public Citizen Litigation Group, which represented workers seeking to sue as a class, called "pointedness in the punctuation."

"It would never have graced the pages of the U.S. Reports save that this case involves ... class proceedings," Kagan wrote, referring to the compendium of Supreme Court rulings.

Roberts responded by noting that Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent "concludes that the contract is ambiguous about class arbitration but criticizes us for treating the contract as ... ambiguous."

“There’s no question that the dissenters are … expressing themselves very strongly,” Nelson said.

In May, the court again ruled 5-4 along ideological lines to overrule a 40-year-old high court precedent that had allowed individuals to sue a state in another state's courts. Liberal justices sensed a degree of hypocrisy in their conservative colleagues' willingness to jettison a 1979 decision so easily.

Breyer brought up the court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which it upheld its prior decision making abortion legal nationwide.

"Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next," he wrote for his liberal colleagues, in a clear warning about abortion rights.

"The reality is that the liberal justices see the writing on the wall," said Chemerinsky, whose Nevada client lost when the justices ruled California cannot be sued in Nevada courts. "The era where they could win some major decisions by getting the vote of a swing justice is over, and they fear what this is going to mean."

On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Thomas, Alito and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch have shown evidence of a pent-up desire to move faster than Roberts is willing to go. All three dissented in December when the court refused to consider efforts by Republican-led states to defund one particular abortion provider.

"What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here?" Thomas wrote. "I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named 'Planned Parenthood.'"