Law Is Justices’ Catnip, Not Politics Afterall?

Letter to Ephesians: Libs moaning about Trump’s “conservative” Supreme Court majority might shut the Fudge Up after seeing evidence that the Constitutional Revisionist minority gets its way as or more often than the other guys. Justice Kagan, e.g., “wins” 70% of the time.

As the WSJ’s editorial board put it: “Here’s a figure that might surprise: Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court’s leading liberal, was in the majority of 70% of this term’s non-unanimous outcomes. To compare, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, stout conservatives, were each at 62%, tied with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. They were a tick above Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 61%.” This assessment is based on the end-of-term statistics “compiled by the SCOTUSblog.” Also belying the idea that the court is always leaning to the RIGHT side of the political spectrum is that 42% of the rulings this time around were unanimous, “which is slightly down from the past two years, but it isn’t far from the average of the past two decades.”

So maybe the Justices, on balance, really are “doing law rather than politics”? The editors concede that 9% of the cases overall (exactly six) resulted in an ideologically split 6-3 decision. But, as noted, it’s these most hotly contested cases that get the most attention, “in part ... simply because ... conflict is catnip for journalists and readers.”

Davd Soul