During his time on the Supreme Court, Breyer said that there was an unwritten rule that was critical to helping justices make progress while deliberating difficult and complex matters of law.
“Nobody speaks twice until everybody has spoken once,” Breyer said. “It’s a very good rule for any small group. You have to listen to what other people are saying and see if you can work with that.”
That rule, he said, helped the justices to stay civil even in the face of sometimes fierce differences of opinion. Breyer, for example, remained good friends with fellow justice Antonin Scalia, even though the two had fundamentally different approaches to the law, he said.
-from an interview with retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer last year at Brown