When Justice Samuel Alito arrived at the Supreme Court in 2006, Justice Antonin Scalia jokingly told him he would spend his first five years on the Court wondering how he got there and the rest of the time wondering how everybody else got there. Though fiercely independent and with differing ideas about how the Court should interpret the Constitution and statutes, most justices put a lot of work into maintaining collegiality. In a tradition instituted by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller in the late 19th century, the justices greet each other and shake hands before meeting in conference or going out onto the bench. They take swipes at each other in their opinions and dissents, which they tend to brush off or joke about. The longstanding tradition of collegiality among the Supreme Court justices is now under threat. REUTERS Recently, however, the court’s famed collegiality has been strained by justices wondering out loud about how their colleagues got there.…