Again, the result was 9-0; Obama’s “pro forma” appointments were void. But the difference in reasoning, again, is huge and consequential. The majority opinion by Breyer (for himself, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan) held, quite sensibly, that if the Senate says it’s in session, the president should back off. But, they added, the recess power is an important one; if the Senate does leave town, the president can make a temporary appointment, even if the “recess” is just an adjournment for 10 days, and even if the office was vacant before the recess began. “The Clause gives the President authority to make appointments during ‘the recess of the Senate’ so that the President can ensure the continued functioning of the Federal Government when the Senate is away,” Breyer wrote; it should be read in accordance with that aim.

No indeed, said Scalia. The clause, like the rest of the Constitution, was not written to make government work, but to cripple it. Presidential inability to fill offices, like other forms of interbranch standoff, “is not a bug to be fixed by this Court, but a calculated feature of the constitutional framework.” This is far-right ideology: Government that works well is a danger to liberty.

Scalia's proposed rule is that the president can only make recess appointments in the brief (a few minutes, usually) annual gap between formal year-long “sessions”; not only that, he can only fill vacancies that also arise during those few minutes or hours. In other words, the clause would be all but meaningless. Now that the Senate can return at a moment's notice, he says, the Recess Clause “is, or rather, should be, an anachronism” like, say, the appendix. It's inflamed now, let's cut it out.

Scalia would like the courts to step into tussles between White House and Capitol that they have previously wisely stayed out of. With one more vote, that cry of “Havoc!” would be law instead of dictum.

On Monday the Court will announce the public-employee-union case, Harris v. Quinn, and the contraceptive-mandate case, Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius. Unanimity in those results is, shall we say, unlikely. But even if the term ends with snarls, we should not underestimate Roberts’ accomplishment. Unanimous results are more durable and useful than 5-4 splits. The chief may in fact be forging the “team dynamic” he spoke of wistfully in 2007. But there are likely to be some brawls in the locker room; even when they agree, these justices are miles apart.