The NT Times covered a voting rights restriction case from Arizona which featured the following exchange:
“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked [Ms. Amunson, the lawyer for Arizona’s secretary of state] a series of hypothetical questions about early voting, ballot forms and deadlines for mailed ballots. Ms. Amunson gave a general answer.
“You have to take a functional view of the political process and look to a holistic view of how it is actually affecting the voter on the ground,” she said.
Justice Alito appeared unsatisfied. “Well, those are a lot of words,” he said. “I really don’t understand what they mean.”
What does it say if a US Supreme Court justice can't understand a lawyer's argument. It could be that the justice is as thick as a brick or the lawyer's words don't mean anything. In this case I'd lean toward the latter explanation.
