The New York Times has a front-page story concerning the rightward tilt of the United States Supreme Court since John Roberts became Chief Justice five years ago.
Not surprisingly, the Court is the most conservative one in decades, surpassing even the Burger and Rehnquist courts ideologically.
This time, however, there is political science data to back the assertion up:
Almost all judicial decisions, (scholars) say, can be assigned an ideological value. Those favoring, say, prosecutors and employers are said to be conservative, while those favoring criminal defendants and people claiming discrimination are said to be liberal.
Analyses of databases coding Supreme Court decisions and justices’ votes along these lines, one going back to 1953 and another to 1937, show that the Roberts court has staked out territory to the right of the two conservative courts that immediately preceded it.
And while Chief Justice Roberts gets the credit — or malign — for turning the Court Right, it may actually be the ascension of Samuel Alito to the Court that will has had the most dramatic impact:
But only one change — Justice Alito’s replacement of Justice O’Connor — really mattered. That move defines the Roberts court. The point is not that Justice Alito has turned out to be exceptionally conservative, though he has: he is the third-most conservative justice to serve on the court since 1937, behind only Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist. It is that he replaced the more liberal justice who was at the ideological center of the court.
And even the justice Alito replaced – Sandra Day O’Conner — expressed misgivings:
“If you think you’ve been helpful, and then it’s dismantled, you think, ‘Oh, dear,’ ” she said at William & Mary Law School in October in her usual crisp and no-nonsense fashion. “But life goes on. It’s not always positive.”
The Times piece has some interesting charts and also includes a pretty limited and misleading “How Your Views Compare” quiz.
Source: Adam Liptak, “Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative In Decades,” New York Times, 25 July 2010.
