Kayfabe Quotes

“... kayfabe ... the system is lying in order for the system to continue.”

“kayfabe”

“Wrestlers have a term for the official story told to the audience, the fiction the performers maintain for the benefit of the show: kayfabe. While kayfabe was once a strict trade code of silence, nowadays just about everyone knows that wrestling is staged. Yet even today, because it is essential to the performance, wrestlers rarely break kayfabe and betray the fiction in the ring. Nevertheless, breaking kayfabe is more common than it once was, in part because performers can break kayfabe to advance their strategic goals in and out of the ring.
It is the same with judicial opinions. Judges adhere to a norm analogous to kayfabe when they refuse to explain the Court's behavior by reference to changes in the Court's composition. Judicial kayfabe demands that opinions explain the Court's behavior according to legal rules and principles, even when criticizing it. This norm leads to some unusually artficial opinions that seem oblivious to the political forces that influence and constitute the Court's membership.”