Monday, June 15, 2009

SCOTUS Scores

An ideological history of the Supreme Court. It does show how the Court has notably tilted to the right over the past twenty years (since the appointment of Clarence Thomas). There is simply no true blue liberal on the Court anymore -- the closest is John Paul Stevens, but he is dwarfed by the conservatism of, say, Antonin Scalia, and doesn't approach the hey-day ratings of a Marshall, Douglas, or Brennan.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

It seems to me that we've now get four justices measuring some shade of blue, the highest amount of left-leaning justices to date.

Unknown said...

Never mind my counting. I am colorblind. Still, in my book numbers count for more than deep blue/red. Five moderate-liberals would outweigh four liberal-liberals in a big way. The former could have averted the entire Bush administration.

PG said...

The '68 term was better, surely; three light-blue justices (including the beginning of Marshall's career); one very dark blue justice (Douglas toward the end of his); and four lightly reddish justices, the darkest of red of whom was John Marshall Harlan.