Q&A – Ranking Supreme Court Justices from Most Conservative to Most Liberal

The “conservative bloc” with an average 1.4 score, is far less conservative than the “liberal bloc” with an average score of –2.6 happens to be.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You have questions, Brian has answers. It's time for today's
Q and A of today. This is the Brian Mud
shown today's Q and A as we take a look
at Supreme Court justices and ideologies. This is brought to
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(00:25):
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(00:47):
look for a little microphone button, see it, tap it.
You may lay down a message right there, maybe for
a future Q in A Today's note this at Brian
Mud Radio, please rank Scotis justices from conservative to liberal. Okay,
So on this note case of asking, you shall receive
today's Q and A follow up to yesterday's Q and A.

(01:09):
Actually where I broke down how often Supreme Court justices
agree with each other on rulings, which, by the way,
surprises a lot of people. Seventy one percent, seventy one
percent of the current court does not split along proceed
to ideological lines on cases. Seventy one percent of cases
are not ideological rulings. And so with that said, we

(01:33):
do see when some of those big, those high profile
cases with a lot of political overtures attached to them,
we do see those ideological splits show up. So about it.
We do have a system for being able to go
about this ranking Supreme Court justices based on ideological splits.

(01:55):
So you're always going to have some degree of subjectivity, right,
just as is the case with members of But with
that said, most frequently you will see a source cited
for ranking justices that is called the Martin Quinn Score.
So this is a system that was put together by
two political scientists, Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn, that around

(02:18):
for in multiple decades now, and they take into account
these things. The ideological spectrum, which they say scores justices
from liberal to conservative, with zero representing a neutral or
moderate position. Dynamic measurement, which they say reflects changes in
justices voting patterns over time, votes which gores are derived

(02:42):
from a justice's voting recording cases, using a statistical model
that estimates their ideological position, and then dynamic item response theory.
It's a fancy one for you. It allows for the
possibility that justices ideology can change over time, and then
they have what they say are applications that determines the

(03:05):
overall ideological makeup of the court. So often when you
hear people rank justices on ideological leanings, it is this
Martin Quinn system that is the basis for it. And
when we take a look at the most recent data
combined with the analysis of judicial philosophies, the ranking of

(03:26):
the current nine justices from the most conservative to the
most liberal looks like this. Your most conservative justice is
Clarence Thomas, followed by Samuel Alito, then Neil Gorsutch, followed
by Amy Coney Barrett, then Brett Kavanaugh, then John Roberts,
and that is your conservative, so called conservative block right there.

(03:50):
Now I'm going to get into some of the specifics
of these justices here in a moment. Then you get
into your so called liberal block, and you have Kintanji
Brown Jackson, followed by Alana Kagan and Justice Sonya Soda Mayor,
who is the most liberal? Now about this, remember the
score zero is neutral. How conservative is the most conservative justice?

(04:17):
How liberal is the most liberal justice? Well, Clarence Thomas
has a score of three, meaning that he is three
times more likely to vote with a conservative position in
these ideological splits than not. How about Sonya Soda Mayor,
how liberal is she? Well, she is just over four
times more likely to vote with the liberal position in

(04:42):
an ideological split. So, in other words, we do see
a situation here to where the most liberal justice is
measurably to the left of the most conservative justice. And
then you kind of work your way through this thing. Alito,
I'm going to run through these real quick because it's
going to be too many numbers on air, and I
don't want to kill you with numbers, but just to
a thumbnail sketch, and again you can always get this

(05:02):
with all my stories to Brian munshow blogs always Samuel Alito,
he's at two point five, so he's two and a
half times more likely to vote with the conservative position.
Neil Gorsich is just above one, so just over one
time more likely to move to the right. And then
the next three are all under one, Amy Coney, Barrett

(05:26):
seven tenths, Brick Kavanaugh five point five, John Roberts Chief
Justice point four. So you see that they are pretty moderate,
just to the right of center. Basically, Amy Coney, Barrett,
Brick Kavanaugh, John Roberts probably washes if you pay attention
to this stuff closely with a lot of what you
have seen, then I can Donji Brown Jackson. She has

(05:49):
been the most moderate through the past three years, her
first three years on the court, although she was the
most liberal justice of this past year, so she has
been trending towards the left. But anyway, Keintaji Brown Jackson
she is one point seven, Elena Kagan just over two,
and I mentioned Soda Mayor at over four. So when

(06:10):
you put the whole thing together, what you end up
seeing is this Sodo Mayor is considerably farther to the
left of the most conservative justice Thomas. But also the
conservative block is less conservative on average than the liberal
block is to the left. So the average conservative block
score is one to four, the average liberal block score

(06:31):
is two six. So there you go. I don't know
how that washes with what your line of thinking was,
but it lines up pretty well with at least my
perception of where they stood. Here is Fox's Chad program
on Chad Pergram with the Speaker's Lobby. New York Democrats
suddenly have more problems in the back end of the

(06:53):
New York Yankees starting rotation. But the Yankees have the
opportunity to fix some of their issues before the July
thirty first trade deadline. Hover there's no trade deadline in politics,
and some conservative and moderate Democrats wish there was a
waiver wire, especially for Democratic New York City mayoral nominee
Jorhan Mamdani. The nomination of the self proclaimed Democratic socialist
is cleaving the party quote. If Zorhan Mamdani becomes Mayor

(07:16):
of New York City, it's going to put a lot
of seats in play in New York, predicted GOP New
York Representative Mike Lawler. Democrats need to defeat Lawler and
probably Congressman Nik Lolota on Long Island if they're to
have a chance to flip the House. Mamdani's nomination presents
Republicans with a plumb opportunity to alter the trajectory of
House races near the Big Apple, and Democrats who represent

(07:36):
swing New York districts like Tom Swazi and Laura Gillen
are trying to build a firewall between him and their
candidacies for re election with the Speaker's lobby Chad Pergram,
Fox News