Roberts Miscellany

At one point in the hearing, Teddy got Roberts too admit during questioning on Brown v Board that in deciding a case "you do need to look at the real-world impact." This may sound like apple pie, but could there be a single institution less equipped to judge the real-world impact of anything (other than its own schedule)? They don't do any investigating of their own, they only hear from lawyers never "real-world" people, they are not held accountable in any way for what they do - and generally their backgrounds do not give them any insights into real-world life. So how can the Supreme Court assess real-world impacts?
Of course when Kennedy talks about real-world impacts he is looking at it from an entirely bleeding-heart perspective. The real world impact of housing discrimination is that some specific people don't get to live in some specific houses, never that, say, every white person in a neighborhood will move out within 5 years leaving a once vibrant community in a complete state of ruin. But then again Kennedy's real world is one where a 32 year old with almost no experience of any kind is elected a United States Senator, so we can't expect much from him in the "real world" understanding department, either.