5 to 4

[cos]

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to deal a blow to the Voting Rights Act, and 5-4 to do the same to DOMA. Justices Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito, were in the majority to thwack voting rights, and in the minority to keep marriage discrimination; Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, were in the minority wanting to protect voting rights, and in the majority for equal rights.

One more Obama appointee on the Supreme Court, and the Voting Rights Act would've survived unharmed.

One McCain or Romney appointee, and the VRA would've been thwacked but DOMA remained fully in force.

Keep that in mind in 2016.

Comments

[drwex]

Bah. You say that as though Justices never changed their positions, nor voted against type. I give you Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy, appointed by Reagan. I give you Sandra Day O'Connor, also appointed by Reagan. Who also appointed Scalia.

If you'd like to make some case that Kennedy, O'Connor, and Scalia all share an unshakeable and identically predictable ideology then I stand ready to laugh heartily in your direction.

I should also point out that Roberts (Bush II) voted with the majority in the ACA decision but that was a sufficiently weird bolt from the blue that I can't explain it by reference to any non-mystical understanding.

[cos]

No, I say that as if that's exactly what would have happened this week, because that is exactly what would have happened this week.

[drwex]

And I say you can't predict that because you can't predict how Justices are going to divide. This session more than most has seen weird alignments. Sure, there are likely bets but you simply cannot look at a president and divine how all of his appointees are going to vote on a given issue.

[goljerp]

I think that presidential selection of Supreme court justices has changed over the years. Both presidents, and the senate, have been much more diligent in checking the ideology of potential justices. Of course, people are human, but I think there's a lot less uncertainty than previously.

Reagan appointed O'Connor, because he wanted to appoint the first woman to the court, and she seemed like a good candidate. Also, the fact that O'Connor and Kennedy have been seen as "liberal leaning" justices speaks more to the conservative swing of the court than the views of those justices; compare Kennedy to the Warren court and he'd end up on the conservative side.

[drwex]

It's true that the Court, like the politics of the country in general, has trended significantly more conservative in the past couple decades. That any progress at all has been made on social justice issues is something of a miracle. The makeup of the Court follows the makeup of the Senate, more or less inevitably.

But that still doesn't change the basic premise, which is that you cannot predict from the appointing president which way a Justice is going to vote on a given issue.