I decided to make an assumption, that when the court is in
agreement (unanimous, or all majority and concurring), those cases deal with
technicalities of the law, rather than political ideology. I don’t know if that
is true, but I thought it would be worth looking at only the cases in which
there is disagreement. Of the 74 cases, 35 cases were full agreement cases. That left 39 cases to look
at for patterns of disagreement.
In this chart, dissent (minority opinion) is in green;
majority and concurring opinions are in red. The light blue shows individual
abstentions. There’s still a pretty good sea of agreement, but it’s much more
balanced between agreement and dissent than when the unanimous cases are
included.
This is admittedly a broad brush. Concurring opinions may
mean there’s agreement with the direction of the judgment, but for different
reasoning. Sometimes there is agreement with exceptions, or agreement only on
specific points. The Missouri v. McNeely case was particularly mixed, with
various combinations of agreement and dissent on various points. Here’s how the
decision is summarized:
SOTOMAYOR, J., announced the judgment of the Court and
delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, II-B, and IV,
in which SCALIA, KENNEDY, GINSBURG, and KAGAN, J.J., joined, and opinion with
respect to Parts II-C and III, in which SCALIA, GINSBURG, and KAGAN, J.J.,
joined. KENNEDY, J., filed an opinion concurring in part. ROBERTS, C.J., filed
an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BREYER and
ALITO, J.J., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
I took this oddity into consideration when counting dissent
and majority opinions, with several of the justices getting half a count each
way on this particular case. The chart below, similar to the one in Monday's post, deals with just the 39 cases in
which there was disagreement. Majority and concurring opinions are combined, in
yellow; dissents are in green, abstentions are light blue. Then I look at the
ratios in which each justice joins with the conservative bloc and the liberal bloc.
To review, a bloc requires at least three of the like-minded
justices voting together; when either side was two/two on a case, Kennedy would
determine whether there was a bloc vote. I show both the ratio (number of times
voting with the bloc over the total number of cases) and the percentage of
voting with the bloc.
From this we can look at who most frequently agrees and
disagrees. I thought it might help to rate them by percentage.
|
Justice
|
%w/C bloc
|
C Rating
|
|
Justice
|
% w/L bloc
|
L Rating
|
|
Roberts
|
92.3%
|
1
|
|
Kagan
|
97.4%
|
1
|
|
Alito
|
81.6%
|
2
|
|
Ginsburg
|
92.3%
|
2
|
|
Thomas
|
76.9%
|
3
|
|
Breyer
|
89.7%
|
3
|
|
Scalia
|
76.9%
|
3
|
|
Sotomayor
|
89.2%
|
4
|
|
Kennedy
|
74.9%
|
5
|
|
Kennedy
|
48.7%
|
5
|
|
Breyer
|
41.0%
|
6
|
|
Roberts
|
41.0%
|
6
|
|
Kagan
|
28.9%
|
7
|
|
Scalia
|
41.0%
|
6
|
|
Sotomayor
|
27.0%
|
8
|
|
Alito
|
26.3%
|
8
|
|
Ginsburg
|
25.6%
|
9
|
|
Thomas
|
25.6%
|
9
|
Kennedy, as you’d expect, is rated in the middle with both
blocs. It does appear that the
liberal bloc is more solid: all four vote with the bloc better than 89%
of the time. Only Roberts is that connected to the conservative bloc. But
Roberts isn’t as disconnected from the liberal bloc as the liberals are from
the conservatives. Breyer is equally connected to the opposite bloc as Roberts is.
But Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg are connected to the conservative bloc well
under 30% of the time. Only Thomas and Alito are that disconnected from the liberal
bloc, but they are also much less connected to their own bloc. In other words,
Thomas especially, and also to some extent Alito, vote the way they think regardless of the opinions of colleagues.
We haven’t yet looked at how many of the 39 cases are close
decisions, and how many were less narrow rulings. Nor have we looked at individual differences on some specific cases. So there's enough for next time, in
Part III.
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