Why You Can't Answer Hypothetical Questions When You're on the Other Side of the Bench

When someone is being considered for confirmation by the senate and they are asked a pothetical question, they say, oh, that's a hypothetical. I can't answer a hypothetical. And yet, when they become confirmed and become justices on the supreme court, and they're inoral oral arguments,. They ask an awful lot of hypothetical questions. Why do they get to do it when they're on the other side of the bench? Because they're not. The people in those cases are affected by those results. Will think you just said this off the top of your head, or you didn't think it true, or you really weren't there for me.