Here is Professor Vermeule's opinion:
[U]nder circumstances in which systemic diversity is desirable, the systemically minded judge will be a legal chameleon, who changes her colors as the environment changes. The legal chameleon acts so as to diversify the court on which she sits by adopting whatever interpretive method is underrepresented at the margin. Rather than copying her environment in order to camouflage herself, she will adjust so as to contradict the dominant tendency in her environment, reducing the risk of groupthink. The legal chameleon, then, might more accurately be called a counter-chameleon. She is a contrarian, but only insofar as contrarianism is beneficial for the group.
The legal chameleon has a measure of critical distance even from her own legal theory, whatever that is. She appreciates that the partisans of this or that interpretive theory may all do best if all are present within the Court or judiciary but none dominates. This perspective seems incomprehensible to the principled partisans, who see the chameleon as having only derivative and tactical commitments rather than unconditional ones, and who do not think they can possibly be made better off by the presence of judges who deviate from (what they take to be) the "true" approach to understanding the Constitution. From the chameleon’s standpoint, however, awareness of the limits of one’s own knowledge suggests that the group should hedge the risk that any particular theory is erroneous. The best way to do so is to have an overall group of judges with diverse approaches.
. . . In reality, although some judges may be legal chameleons, most will not.
Adrian Vermeule, The Supreme Court 2008 Term Foreword: System Effects and the Constitution, 123 Harv. L. Rev. 6, 70-71 (2009).
