Saturday, May 02, 2009
Graphing the Supreme Court
In its coverage of Justice Souter's retirement, the New York Times has prepared a nifty graphic that plots the relative rightyness and leftyness of recent and sitting Supreme Court Justices.
Assuming for the moment that the graph's underlying methodology makes sense, it seems to me that there is actually only one lesson to be drawn: With age, some people mellow and moderate, and others get crankier and less inhibited. Candidly, I have no idea which way I am likely to go in the second half of life; it probably depends on my experiences. No wonder that presidents, senators, and Americans are constantly surprised by the evolution in the jurisprudence of Supreme Court justices. They probably also surprise themselves.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat May 02, 10:59:00 AM:
Interesting graph.
Is Thomas going off the reservation? I used to follow the consensus view that Thomas was Scalia's junior associate. I've since come to believe that Scalia is just a toady for the DC power establishment -- a closet anti-libertarian -- and have great respect for Thomas.
What's up with the convergence of the Dem appointees and Souter -- group think?
The way justices vote is a function of the kinds of cases that get heard -- which is affected by the politics of the majority on the bench. This isn't just because of cert votes ... if you want to establish precedent, you want to be careful in the cases your press to the Supreme Court. So I suspect this creates a bias in this kind of graph -- and why there's a tight block of four on the left.
Link, over
By , at
Sun May 03, 03:46:00 AM:
I thought the general rule is that SC justices are always more liberal once on the court than they were elsewhere, and they trend even more liberal over time. This is usually ascribed to the corrosive effect of the DC culture and media, whose positive regard SC justices crave.
