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The Supreme Court now has three blocs

Published on 26 Comments on The Supreme Court now has three blocs

Based on recent Supreme Court rulings, it's not quite right anymore to say that we have a liberal bloc and a conservative bloc. We now have three blocs:

  • Liberal (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson)
  • Conservative (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett)
  • Ultra-conservative (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch)

The liberal and ultra-conservative wings are almost always on opposite sides in hot button cases. The entire power of the court rests now on the vibes of the three conservatives.

26 thoughts on “The Supreme Court now has three blocs”

  1. Ken Rhodes

    Perhaps until yesterday. Then we had the Sackler/Purdue Pharma fiasco today.

    Now it appears that the labels "liberal" and "conservative" have been disconnected from the English language, and left to be used as epithets rather than meaningful dialog.

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    2. dausuul

      Sackler/Purdue Pharma is the "almost" in "almost always."

      And it makes sense that it would be. It's a tough case where the issues don't fall neatly into partisan boxes.

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  2. BKDad

    The real problem is that the "middle" of these three groups is hardly in the middle.

    The ultra-conservatives are not so much conservative - that's just the label they like to apply to themselves - as they are extremists with their own set of grievences they think they can cure by whipping it upon others. It must be their own form of self-medication.

    I tend to consider them like this - If I was a young person who was starting law school, which of these would I like to have as professors or mentors who'd teach me about the core and reasoning of the law. My own top choice would be Jackson.

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  3. name99

    This seems to be weaponized labelling rather than useful labelling.
    How about I rename them "ultra-left", "mainstream", and "traditional"? Is that more honest? More useful?

    Relative to America as a whole, both this split, and calling them "left", "mainstream", and "right" seems perfectly reasonable to me. About 1/3 of the country gets about 1/3 of the judges, and represents 1/3 of political views.
    It's not useful to sanity or rational thought, nor is it honest, to pretend that mainstream America is more like San Francisco than like Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and that their presence on the courts is some on-going affront to the nation.

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    1. Marlowe

      Oh, please. No, it is not more useful and is downright fallacious. Kevin's formulation is already too charitable to the supposed "middle" block (I'm not sure if this "three bloc" formulation is all that accurate--for example, on voting rights, Roberts is as extreme as anyone on the Court--but I'll accept it for the sake of argument.) If you truly think Roberts, Kavanaugh (who has been a right wing Republican political operative his entire adult life up to and including today) and Barrett are somehow moderate, mainstream, or traditional, well, we are just not living on the same planet. (I'm on Earth, you're on the Bizarro World.) Assuming (and again, I'm not sure I do) that there are indeed three blocs on the Court, I'd label them (1) liberal, (2) hard right, partially corrupt, partisan Republican but aware that preserving at least a fig leaf of legitimacy for the Court serves their goals in the long term, and (3) Christofascist adjacent, utterly corrupt, shamelessly justifying judgements enshrining their policy preferences into law with opinions that are transparently risible.

      Yes, my categorization of the second two blocs is long and unwieldy but, I submit, more accurate. Also, while the Bobbsey Twins of corruption undoubtedly fit into my definition of bloc 3, Gorsuch, as horrible as he is, is not quite as bad and may be somewhat between bloc 2 and 3. Yet another reason that I am skeptical of the usefulness of asserting that the current Court has three blocs.

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    2. Joel

      Like others on the right, you're projecting. Calling things what they are isn't weaponizing. Is calling a cat a feline weaponizing taxonomy?

      It's not useful to sanity or rational thought, nor is it honest, to pretend that the right-wing extremists are conservative. A more useful and honest description would be to call Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson "conservative," Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett "right-wing" and Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch "right-wing radical extremists."

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  4. Laertes

    Thomas and Alito are joined at the hip, but Gorsuch does throw the occasional wild pitch. Don't forget that he wrote for the majority in Bostock. And he votes with the liberals a lot on stuff involving Native Americans.

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    1. Laertes

      Which of course isn't a surprise. He had lots of contact with Native Americans in his formative years. Conservatives can often get real Liberal where it concerns people they actually give a shit about.

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  5. bbleh

    Ima disagree slightly. I think there's FOUR groups -- the Liberal as you say, the Reactionary (Thomas and Alito only), the Corporate (Roberts and Gorsuch), and the Swingers (Kavanaugh and Barrett), and the Swingers are iconoclastic -- Kavanaugh is coming off as a lightweight who seems to think he can decide based on how he feels Things Should Be, like some kind of uber-Legislature-plus-Court (or I suppose, Prince), and Barrett is still figuring out where she wants to go.

    I think this is one reason we HAVEN'T seen more 6-3 decisions, which would seem to be almost the default if there were 3 groups as suggested. The Corporatists DON'T always agree with the Reactionaries, and the Swingers are unreliable. I think that's also why we're seeing so many "punt" decisions (eg denial based on standing), and why they're taking so long this term: it's really difficult for them to form a majority over anything.

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  6. camusvsartre

    I used to do this type of "bloc analysis" when I taught Civil Liberties and Con Law.
    I think there is some truth to the grouping here but the problem is that the alleged center (or conservative bloc in Keven's labeling) is far closer to the far right bloc than to any mythical middle. It is probably closer to accurate to claim a 6 person conservative bloc with 3 members of that bloc occasionally straying off the reservation.

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  7. Peter Goldstein

    The three blocs are

    1. The liberals;
    2. The bought and paid for;
    3. The bought and paid for who will occasionally vote with the liberals so people won't think they're bought and paid for.

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  8. aldoushickman

    You can divide the Court's members into groupings, but it's unclear how informative or useful an exercise that is. Better to note that we have a 6-3 conservative majority, something that hasn't happened in a century, and that last time 'round, the Court was striking down minimum wage and child labor laws as unconstitutional infringements on the right to freely contract.

    So, we are in for a very wild ride, and we're just at the beginning of it. It might be comforting to note that Barrett or Roberts will occasionally side with the liberals, but the colder reality is that the majority on the court can afford to lose a vote, which means they are off the leash. There's a reason Thomas has stopped sleeping through arguments--he's finally getting what he wants.

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  9. rick_jones

    The blocs are more generally:

    The ones I agree with almost all the time
    The ones I disagree with almost all the time
    The ones I go back and forth agreeing/disagreeing with

    The general “I” of course…

    …

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  10. Jim Carey

    Based on recent Supreme Court rulings, we now have three blocs:

    Conservative, aka the ones attempting to preserve the status-quo (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson)
    The ones who don't want to admit they're unwilling to constrain their own ignorance (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett)
    And the ones who don't care if you know (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch)

    In George Orwell's 1984 (1949), an authoritarian government creates "Newspeak" a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit critical thinking, and meaningful self-expression is a "thought crime" (maybe I should be using a pseudonym).

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      1. Jim Carey

        Depends on your definition of free speech.

        Democratic definition: I might end up criticizing your opinion, but not until after you help me to understand it.

        Republican definition: Do as I say and not as I do or you'll have demonstrators outside your house with megaphones telling your neighbors you're a pedophile.

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  11. D_Ohrk_E1

    IMO there are five blocs:

    (A) Conservative and dogmatic - Alito, Thomas

    (B) Conservative but wildcard - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch

    (C) Conservative but not that conservative - Barrett, Roberts

    (D) Liberal but not too liberal - Jackson, Kagan

    (E) Liberal savior - Sotomayor

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