Roberts Takes 'Dominant Role,' Was Justice Most Often in Majority
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority in 92 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court’s cases this term, surpassing Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is known as the court’s swing voter.
SCOTUSblog crunched the numbers for its “Stat Pack” (PDF) while three newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have stories evaluating Roberts’ influence.
The Times says the court has “fundamentally changed” under Roberts. “Judicial minimalism is gone, and the court has entered an assertive and sometimes unpredictable phase,” the newspaper says. The Post notes Roberts’ “dominant role” and says the court has “established itself as a confident group of justices willing to act boldly and speak independently.”
But the Wall Street Journal calls Kennedy “the court’s true compass,” noting that he provided the pivotal fifth vote in decisions striking down restrictions on corporate campaign spending, extending Second Amendment gun rights, finding separation of powers issues in an Enron oversight board, and siding with a law school’s refusal to recognize a Christian student group that discriminated against nonbelievers.
Roberts has vowed to lessen divisions in the court, and the SCOTUSblog stats show he is making headway, the Wall Street Journal says. Forty-six percent of the court’s 84 opinions were unanimous this term, compared to 33 percent the previous term. Eighteen percent of the decisions were 5-4 splits, down from 30 percent the previous term.
SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein, a lawyer with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, told the Times that Roberts, Kennedy and three other justices who are more conservative were both aggressive and selective in deciding the issues. “I’m struck by the ways in which the conservatives seem to be willing to take significant steps on core questions,” Goldstein said. “In other cases, the five more conservative members of the court don’t seem to be prepared to press every advantage.”
Goldstein’s own wrap-up of the term at SCOTUSblog said the justices voted in “a varied and shifting mix” that didn’t always fit preconceptions about their liberal or conservative leanings. He noted that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are often deemed the court’s most conservative duo, but they often take positions favoring criminal defendants and are often willing to overturn legislation based on their constitutional objections.
“The most consistently ‘conservative’ justice on the court—if conservative is interpreted to mean expressing a consistent confidence in the government and narrow construction of the Constitution—is instead Justice Alito,” Goldstein wrote. “He was the most reliable vote for the position of the government, particularly in criminal cases.”
