Linda Greenhouse Says High Court's 'Center Has Shifted to the Right'
Is the era of the “Kennedy Court,” for lack of a better term, over? Veteran U.S. Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse suggests that it is.
In a column on the New York Times’ Opinionator blog, Greenhouse, who covered the court for the Times for 30 years before retiring in 2008, compared voting patterns from last term with previous terms. She found that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who cast the deciding vote in all 24 decisions that were 5-4 in the 2006-2007 term, dissented in 5 of the 18 cases decided by 5-vote majorities in the term that ended in June.
The Wall Street Journal opined last month that Kennedy is still “the court’s true compass,” because of the decisions in which he was the pivotal fifth vote: 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.
Still, the three justices to Kennedy’s right, ideologically speaking—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.—all cast fewer dissenting votes in close cases, Greenhouse found. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was tied with Kennedy at 5.
Greenhouse’s conclusion? That a “plausible case” can be made that the “Kennedy court” is history.
“Those are admittedly fine distinctions from a small sample, but I would argue that it’s the trend that counts,” she wrote. “Justice Kennedy no longer appears to reside at the court’s center of gravity. The center has shifted to the right.”
So, whose court is it now?
Greenhouse doesn’t give it a name. But she says the numbers suggest that the court is now securely in the collective hands of its five most conservative members: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy. Roberts voted with the majority in 92 percent of the cases before the court this term.
Also see:
ABA Journal: “The ‘Super Median’ – On an ideological court, it’s all about keeping Justice Kennedy”
ABA Journal: “Practical Meaning: As the Court Shifted Right, Stevens Kept His Place”
ABA Journal: “A Man of Moderation”
