A simplistic way to think about the current US Supreme Court is to say there are 6 conservative justices and 3 liberal ones. “Simplistic” but often wrong. Writing for Politico, a legal scholar and an economist have done a math analysis and show that another grouping makes more sense, that grouping comes out 3-3-3.
Other considerations besides conservative vs. liberal are operational. Basically the so-called “conservative 6” end up split between the institutionalist 3 and the not-so-institutionalist 3. This dimension looks at:
How much a justice considers questions outside the facts and the law of a specific case in reaching their positions. This might include things like how much weight to give the court’s previous decisions, how easy it will be for lower courts to apply the new rule, or whether to decide a case more narrowly or more broadly.
About 50 percent of the court’s cases were decided unanimously. Only five of 57 cases — just 8 percent — were decided 6-3 with the six Republican appointees all on one side and the three Democratic appointees on the other. Ninety percent of the 57 cases were decided with at least one liberal justice in the majority.
The three liberal justices voted together in fewer than a quarter of the non-unanimous cases, and the six conservatives voted together only 17 percent of the time.
Having a less simplistic way to understand SCOTUS decisions can be useful.
