Supreme hypocrites:
Liberal justices vote in lockstep
Zachary Leeman - September 11, 2019
While liberals screamed that Brett Kavanaugh would bring about the apocalypse when he joined the Supreme Court and any other conservative picks would do the same, a breakdown of how the current judges have voted shows a very different picture, one where Americans may want to be a bit more cautious of the more left-leaning judges.
Based on the last several Supreme Court sessions, justices who were appointed by Democrat presidents voted in lockstep far more than ones appointed by Republican presidents, according to USA Today.
(Screenshot from supremecourt.gov)
Of the 67 decisions after argument in the term that ended in June, judges appointed by Democrat presidents voted in unison a whopping 51 times. The five Republican appointed judges voted in unison only 37 times. A further breakdown of those numbers actually paints a scarier picture.
While liberals remain in lockstep, each conservative justice has broken from the pack at least once to be the deciding vote on a case that the liberal justices agreed on.
Of the 20 cases that were split 5-4, only seven found the “expected” divide of conservatives justices over liberal ones, according to Empirical SCOTUS.
What this says is that the more right-leaning justices are independent thinkers able to break from party lines. Left-leaning justices, on the other hand, are beholden to their base more and participate in groupthink, two very dangerous things for Supreme Court justices to do.
Trump’s two picks to the courts, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, were both completely torn apart by the mainstream media and protested to no end by leftists when they were nominated. The world was told these two otherwise upstanding men were plants for Trump to push an extreme conservative agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kavanaugh has been an unpredictable judge and Gorsuch has shown his more libertarian colors in his votes. The two have actually voted the same in their first term less than any other two justices appointed by the same president, going back as far as at least John F. Kennedy.
The report from Empirical SCOTUS actually shows that this is not a new phenomenon. Liberals more often have a sheep-like mentality in their approach to issues.
In the 2014-15 session, which was the last full term before Justice Antonin Scalia’s year-long vacancy and death, the four liberal justices stuck together in 55 of 66 cases. The four conservatives (not including Kennedy, who was a famous swing vote) stuck together in only 39 cases.
The report also often found that in past sessions when conservative justices are completely united, it’s because the entire court is behind a decision.
While some may see these numbers as a call for a more united conservative front in the court, it should be more of an indictment of the thinking on the left. Leftists do their best to paint conservatives as myopic thinkers, but when it comes down to it, there is far more diversity of thought on the right. Liberals more often simply vote how they are told to, exhibiting a herd mentality that is quite scary.
The current justices are Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.