Now that Senator Manchin declared he will vote to confirm Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court, Jackson’s confirmation in a week or so is all but a foregone conclusion. Will Jackson usher in a new era of judging on the Court? This outcome is very unlikely. The Court now has six conservative, republican nominated justices…
Tag: Ideology
The Ideological Status-Quo in Supreme Court COVID-19 Litigation
The Court has decided 16 cases on emergency application related to the COVID-19 restrictions with obvious battle lines drawn between the justices (the 16 cases is after removing cases that appeared before the Court twice). The Court’s newest appointee, Justice Barrett, helped establish herself on the Court’s right with her first opinion in the COVID…
Is the Court Tracking Right or Roberts Left?
While Supreme Court Justices’ votes are not purely the product of ideological preferences, some of the most important cases the justices decide come down to 5-4 splits along ideological lines. This was especially apparent during the 2017 Supreme Court term. Even though Chief Justice Roberts was in the conservative camp for many of these split…
Differences Between “Obama” and “Trump” Judges, While Sometimes Subtle, Can’t Be Denied
Justices of the Supreme Court rarely give public comments on words or actions of members of the elected branches of the federal government. This made the recent spat between Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump, when the two intrinsically debated the role of partisanship in the federal judiciary, all the more surprising and…
Ideological or Individual Rifts: Justice Thomas at the Edge of the Court
There is and has been a clear ideological division between the more conservative and liberal Justices on the Court, especially in cases with high profile civil rights issues such as marriage equality. A not so often examined aspect of this fissure has to do with the cohesion of the individual voting blocs. For instance, Justice…
Has The Supreme Court Turned a Liberal Tide?
The pieces are in place. With Justice Scalia’s death the liberals on the Court (both ideologically speaking and by virtue of their appointments by Democratic Presidents) are matched evenly with the Court’s conservatives for the first time in almost half a century. The last time a majority of Justices appointed by democrats sat on the…
Forecasting Votes in Hellerstedt
On March 2nd, the Court heard oral arguments in perhaps the most publicized case of the Term – Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (No. 15-274). The case brings into question Texas’ new controversial law limiting who can perform abortions. Prior to oral arguments expectations were already high that the Justices would split along ideological lines…
The Breyer Court? (Network Analysis of the Justices Votes in OT 2014)
In political science ideal points are the most common measure describing judges’ votes. The goal of ideal points in the study of courts is locating the relative political ideology of a judge on a scale of liberal to conservative. Of course what it actually means to be a conservative or liberal judge is somewhat contested….
empiricalscotus.com 