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FULL COURT PRESS; Masters of the Hypothetical

Supreme Court justices are a staid, serious bunch. They've been educated at the top schools. They're logical, sharp-thinking, highbrow even. Yet hardly an oral argument goes by without one of them offering a hypothetical question to the lawyer at the lectern that is so kooky, so off-the-wall, so convoluted, that it makes jaws drop.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who lowers his eyeglasses on his nose when he speaks, is a master of the genre. His hypotheticals are laden with quirky details. In a dispute over whether the Food and Drug Administration can regulate cigarettes as drugs, he began asking about fictitious substances the FDA also might try to control.

"Suppose you got the thermal-glove ...

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