Key Data Points Throw Wrench in Communists/Globalists’ ‘Partisan’ Supreme Court Narrative

While The Supremes delivered major conservative victories in the final days of this term, voting patterns reveal the Court was not as unflinchingly conservative as its critics claim.

This from dailycaller.com.

• Fourteen decisions split the justices 6-3 along ideological lines last term, while only five cases did the same during the 2022-2023 term, according to data compiled by Adam Feldman and Jake Truscott.

• Justice Jackson voted in the majority 84% of the time, more than the liberal justices did last term and more than Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan did this term.

• Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barret were in the majority most frequently, at 96%, 95% and 91% of the time, respectively, per Feldman and Truscott.

After the Supreme Court released major rulings overturning affirmative action and striking down the student loan forgiveness plan, communists/globalists again began advocating for court packing, term limits, and a code of ethics for the justices—calling the Supreme Court “MAGA,” “illegitimate,” and, as Joe-Joe Biden described them, “not a normal court.”

Yet only five cases split the justices 6-3 along ideological lines during the 2022-2023 term, the smallest amount in any of the past six terms and less than the 14 cases with the same split last term, according to data compiled by Adam Feldman and Jake Truscott, who conduct statistical analysis of the Supreme Court on the website Empirical Scotus.

The Manhattan Institute Constitutional Studies Director and Senior Fellow Ilya Shapiro told the Daily Caller News Foundation:

Just over a week ago, before the affirmative action decision…the general narrative was, wow, this Court is all over the place.

The last handful of cases didn’t change that statistical pattern.

Case Western Reserve University School of Law Professor Jonathan Adler told the DCNF:

In general, the voting patterns for any given term are more a function of the mix of cases heard that term than they are any change in the orientation of the Court or the approach of individual justices.

This is because the cases heard in a single term are never fully representative of the range of issues that can come before the Court, and this is more true than ever given the decline in the number of cases the Court is hearing each term.

He continued:

So if we compare this term to last term, the Court’s ideological orientation has not changed meaningfully, but the Court did hear a different mix of cases, and given the issues in those cases the voting patterns were different.

Justice Neil Gorsuch broke with the conservative majority to side with the liberals in a case on the Navajo Nation’s water rights. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh Kavanaugh also joined the three liberal justices to form a 5-4 majority in striking down Alabama’s congressional district map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

An unusual majority also shot down the “independent state legislature theory,” the idea that legislatures have unrestricted constitutional authority to administer federal elections without review from state courts, in a 6-3 ruling in Moore v. Harper. Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Other high profile cases gained unexpected unanimous support. All nine justices sided with a Christian postal worker in Groff v. DeJoy, ruling that employers cannot deny a religious accommodation unless it would result in “substantial increased costs.”

In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the justices unanimously rolled back the EPA’s authority to regulate under the Clean Water Act (CWA), delivering a victory for a couple prevented by the EPA from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho.

According to The Washington Post:

Additionally, in cases that did split along the predicted ideological lines, polls show Americans are evenly split on the outcome or mostly agree.

Shapiro told the DCNF:

The justices are all acting in good faith trying to get the cases right as they see them. We’re seeing a lot of different approaches to interpretation.

As far as next term, Adler said:

[I]t’s hard to tell if the pattern will hold.

Adler concluded:

We don’t yet know all that much about next term because the Court has not yet accepted many cases, perhaps only a third of the full number of cases it will hear next year. But whether the Court appears to be reaching consensus or is dividing on ideological lines will be driven primarily by the ultimate mix of cases the Court ends up hearing.

Based on the cases the Supreme Court has already accepted, Shapiro said next term:

[I]s shaping up to be a big government structure, administrative state term.

He concluded:

I don’t think it is going to grab the same kind of attention from the popular press.

Final thought, slightly off topic: What about Jackson? Afterall, Justice Jackson was appointed by the illegitimate Biden and the 2020 elections have been proven beyond any doubt to have been stolen. Upon return of conservatism to the helm, will she be rightfully removed?

Perhaps a new rallying cry:

What about Justice Jackson?