Q&A – How Partisan is the Supreme Court?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station page in the iHeart app.
Today’s entry: (Submitted via Talkback) Good morning, Brian and Joel. Brian, in the past, you did an analysis of the Supreme Court saying that they don't vote party line, basically, if I'm summarizing correctly. It seems to be now that Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson are voting on a party line on a regular basis. Has that analysis changed?
Bottom Line: It’s a great question and you have a good memory. The last time I covered this dynamic was in January of 2022 when Justice Stephen Breyer was stepping aside for the seat now occupied by Justice Jackson. At the time I mentioned a couple of related points that probably surprised a lot of people and likely still will...so let's get to it.
Two great resources for researching this type of information are the University of Washington Supreme Court Database and SCOTUS Blog. Let’s start with how often the previous Supreme Court (when Breyer was still on the court). The answer was...
- 70% of the court’s rulings were non-ideological, consensus rulings
That meant that over 70% of cases were decided outside of perceived ideological lines – commonly with unanimous decisions. The prominent reason it feels different is that while most Supreme Court cases don’t receive meaningful news coverage – the high-profile cases which do are commonly decided with apparent ideological interpretations of the law. So how has that played out most recently with Justice Jackson in place of Breyer?
- 71% of the court’s rulings have been non-ideological, consensus rulings
A nearly identical outcome that actually shows there’s been a bit more unity on the court than there had been previously. Perception and reality often aren’t on the same page, and this dynamic helps to illustrate that point. Here are a few other dynamics with the court most recently that are likely to surprise.
- 45% of all rulings in the three most recent Supreme Court term have been unanimous
- Only 9% have been perceived partisan splits (6-3 rulings)
- Chief Justice John Roberts has been the most likely to vote for the majority opinion (95% of the time)
- Justice Jackson has been the least likely to vote in the majority (72%) of the time
This illustrates that Chief Justice Roberts is the most influential member of the Supreme Court most recently (it had been Brett Kavanaugh when I last updated this information three and a half years ago). We also see that Justice Jackson is most likely to be an outlier – which is probably the one statistic that lines up best with perceptions.
Interestingly... Since joining the Supreme Court, Justice Jackson hasn’t been the most “liberal” justice on the court through her first three years on it – though she was the most liberal this past year. It seems as though she might be moving further left as she becomes more comfortable on the court. Also, to date, she has been approximately 8% “more liberal” in her rulings than her predecessor, Breyer – who had the most moderate voting record of the liberal block of justices. Therefore, the court has moved to the left with her on it, however without much effect given the 6-3 “conservative” majority.