Revisited: Q&A SCOTUS IDEOLOGY

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 Show. Yeah,
Today's Q and A as we take a look at
Supreme Court justices and ideologies. This is brought to you
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(00:25):
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Four free on demand. Happy day. And while you're in there,

(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
Mudd Radio, please rank s Cotis 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. Actually

(01:09):
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 do

(01:34):
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 Congress. 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, been 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 gorees 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. Now.

(03:50):
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 Alanta Kagan and Justice Sonya Soda Mayor? Who
is the most liberal? Now about this, remember the score

(04:10):
zero is neutral. How conservative is the most conservative justice?
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,

(04:34):
how liberal is she? Well, she is just over four
times more likely to vote with the liberal position in
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

(04:55):
going to be too many numbers on air, and I
don't want to kill you with numbers, but to a
thumbnail sketch, and again you can always get this with
all my stories to Brian munshow blog is 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

(05:17):
time more likely to move to the right. And then
The next three are all under one. Amy Coney Barrett
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,

(05:38):
Britt Kavanaugh, John Roberts. Probably washes if you pay attention
to this stuff closely with a lot of what you
have seen. Then Kendanji Brown Jackson, she has 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

(05:59):
towards the left. But anyway, Kintaji Brown Jackson, she is
one point seven, Alanna Kagan just over two, and I
mentioned Soda Mayor at over four. So when 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

(06:21):
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 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 you, at least my perception of

(06:43):
where they stood. Here is Fox's Chad program,