Breaking Kayfabe

The membership of the Supreme Court affects how it decides cases. This maxim is well accepted among the public. But it is exceedingly rare for Supreme Court opinions to acknowledge this fact, even when it provides the best explanation for the Court’s behavior. And in the unusual instance in which Supreme Court opinions do refer to changes in the Court’s membership, it is jarring.

This Article explores two questions that flow from these uncontroversial facts. First, why does it happen so rarely? Second, why does it happen at all? To answer these questions, the Article looks to an unusual source: professional wrestling.

Wrestlers have a term for the official story told to the audience, the fiction the performers maintain for the benefit of the show: kayfabe. While kayfabe was once a strict trade code of silence, nowadays just about everyone knows that wrestling is staged. Yet even today, because it is essential to the performance, wrestlers rarely “break” kayfabe—and betray the fiction—in the ring. Nevertheless, breaking kayfabe is more common than it once was, in part because performers can break kayfabe to advance their strategic goals in and out of the ring.