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What? Liberal Supremes win more?

  • snitzoid
  • Jul 1
  • 3 min read

This must be some type of sick joke. I was told the Supremes are all f-cked up and controlled by a bunch of right-wing idiots?


Justice Kagan Won 70% of the Time

Thomas and Alito had the majority in only 62% of non-unanimous cases.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

June 30, 2025 5:42 pm ET


Here’s a figure that might surprise: Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court’s leading liberal, was in the majority of 70% of this term’s non-unanimous outcomes. To compare, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, stout conservatives, were each at 62%, tied with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. They were a tick above Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 61%.


That’s according to the end-of-term statistics compiled by the website SCOTUSblog. Also notable: 42% of rulings this year were unanimous, which is down slightly from the past two years, but it isn’t far from the average of the past two decades. Another 24% of cases produced lopsided decisions, 8-1 and 7-2 (or else 7-1 with a recusal).


Only 9% of cases overall, six total, resulted in ideologically split 6-3 outcomes, with the liberal Justices dissenting as a bloc. That compares with 6% of cases, or four, that had 6-3 decisions except with Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch in the minority.


All of this belies the arguments on the left that the High Court is marching in lockstep toward the right, that it is somehow doing politics instead of law. The ideological 6-3 cases get attention, but in part that’s simply because they are hotly disputed, and conflict is catnip for journalists and readers. When eight or even nine Justices see eye to eye on settling a legal controversy, that attracts less notice, but it’s part of the Court’s record, too.


Opinion: Potomac Watch

WSJ Opinion Potomac Watch

Unexpected Majorities and Conservative Victories at the Supreme Court



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This term the Justices were unanimous that a state can’t deny religious nonprofits a tax exemption merely because they don’t proselytize or restrict their assistance based on faith (Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin). Justice Sotomayor wrote the opinion overturning a 4-3 decision by Wisconsin’s liberal state Supreme Court.


They were unanimous that plaintiffs in “reverse discrimination” suits have to meet the same legal burden as everybody else, meaning they don’t need to prove anything extra (Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services). Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did the textualist work of saying that the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies to all Americans equally.


They were unanimous on reining in lower-court judges who have sought to micromanage environmental reviews by agencies doing federal permitting (Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County).


They were unanimous that American victims of terrorism aren’t barred by the Constitution from suing the Palestine Liberation Organization in U.S. courts (Fuld v. PLO).


They were apparently unanimous in upholding the law passed by Congress that says TikTok must cut ties with Chinese control or be banned from U.S. app stores (TikTok v. Garland). The opinion in that case was unsigned, but there were no dissents.


The point of such statistics isn’t to obfuscate that this is a conservative Court, the best in living memory. That’s true. Yet two-thirds of cases this term weren’t closely divided, and the originalist Justices all have jurisprudential idiosyncrasies, resulting in 6-3 and 5-4 cases with scrambled lineups that confound partisan politics. That’s what doing the law looks like.

 
 
 

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