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Viewing SCOTUS Through a Partisan Glass, Part II

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Dahlia Lithwick has this op-ed in the WashPost puzzling over the nonideological lineups this term: Court watchers have stood dumbfounded all spring as the high court rejected and renounced the 5 to 4 conservative-liberal splits that seemed to have calcified after last term's bitter divisions. The end of June 2007 saw a full third of the court's cases decided by a 5 to 4 margin; as of this writing, the court has decided just four cases that way this year. At this point last year, Kennedy had cast his vote with the prevailing five justices every single time. But this term has seen a slew of ideology-busting unanimous, 7 to 2, and 6 to 3 decisions, which have not just baffled the experts but also made the usual end-of-term chatter about "activists," "minimalists" and "strict constructionists" sound as old-fashioned as the Bee Gees...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on June 16, 2008 (boomark / email).