Write Nora Donnelly, a law student, and Ethan Leib, a law professor, in "The Supreme Court Is Not as Politicized as You May Think" (NY Times).
October 8, 2023
"[T]he Supreme Court operates much more functionally and consensually across its partisan divide than most people realize..."
"... and that fact ought to figure into how Americans judge a court that often gets caricatured. Judged by a close look at the opinions of recent terms, the Roberts court is closer to a 9-to-0 court than it is a 6-to-3 court. In recent research, we isolated 87 statutory cases — cases that interpret laws rather than the Constitution itself — from the Supreme Court’s last three terms.... Of those 87 cases, 37 percent were decided unanimously. If you add to that consensual pile any case that has only one member of the court refusing to sign the majority opinion, you get nearly half of the cases (40 out of 87). The other cases do not come out along predictably partisan lines, either: There were actually only 10 cases over three years that generated the ideological division you might expect given the court’s configuration.... "
Write Nora Donnelly, a law student, and Ethan Leib, a law professor, in "The Supreme Court Is Not as Politicized as You May Think" (NY Times).
Write Nora Donnelly, a law student, and Ethan Leib, a law professor, in "The Supreme Court Is Not as Politicized as You May Think" (NY Times).
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14 comments:
So, basically, cases without any political impact produce fairly large majority decisions.
"The Supreme Court is not as politicized as you may think."
And this explains Democrat hostility to the Roberts Court more than any particular decision.
By the time cases get to Phoenix, I mean, cases get to the Supremes, they have mostly been politically denuded by the lower courts. The politics of cases are, to my layman lenses, often unreasonable.
I’m commenting here because I spotted a chance to use the word unreasonable.
I’m not sure how much you can learn from 8-1 and 9-0 decisions as most of them have no ideological implications. What does interest me is the other category mentioned—split courts that are not split along ideological lines. Even if these cases do not have political implications either, it still shows justices across the spectrum can work together.
Behind a paywall, as usual.
I note that Ketanji Brown Jackson has only been on the court since June of last year. If Donnelly and Leib look again two years down the road it’s possible that we may see a more partisan divide. Or not.
Ten cases out of 87 is 11.5%, and without knowing precisely what those ten cases were.
Only surprise is where it was published. Anyone who follows the court was well aware of the reality they describe.
Haven't a lot of people been pointing this out in general for years, and noted that this court is even more in this direction? The myth persists because people want it to be true, regardless of the data.
But partisan politicians have an incentive to make the court look far more partisan. It helps their election campaign rile up the base.
Every lawyer that argues before SCOTUS should now ask opposing counsel if they or their firm has any financial ties to any of the justices.
So just ignore that the members of the Court differ in completely irreconcilable ways on interpretation and application of the Constitution, and we'll see where that gets the country.
If consensus or diverse coalitions are normal then the question that needs to be answered is why certain easily identified cases produce predictable divisions.
"Behind a paywall, as usual."
There's a hot link on the word "research."
So is the New York Times telling Democrats they probably SHOULDN'T assassinate Supreme Court members?
Yet we keep hearing how horrible the SC is. Huh! Maybe its all bullshit!
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