The First Voting Statistics

Every year, we publish a variety of statistics on the Term. Our preliminary set of voting statistics (subject to the effect of two decisions tomorrow and double checking generally) is now available here. Last Term’s numbers for comparison are available here.

I did some preliminary and rough analysis of the effect of the new Justices. I averaged the Justices’ voting relationships in the 2001 and 2005 Terms. Then I compared them with this Term. The results were relatively striking.

Chief Justice Roberts accomplished something you wouldn’t think possible in a sometimes deeply divided court, at least for someone who is not the “swing vote”: he was closer to every other Justice than his predecessor. For three of the more liberal Justices, the change was dramatic: Stevens, +15%; Souter, +17%; Ginsburg, +17%. For more conservative members of the Court, the change tended to be smaller (though for Scalia it was 12%).

Don’t get confused into thinking that Roberts gravitated towards the more liberal Justices. Rehnquist’s relationship with the other conservatives was already very strong; Roberts had little to do to establish a high degree of affinity.

Instead, the data shows that Roberts – consciously or not, and more likely the former – built bridges throughout the Court.

The numbers for Justice Alito were striking as well, in a way that is encouraging for conservatives, discouraging for progressives. (Note that the sample size for Justice Alito is smaller – only 36 cases – and therefore potentially misleading, particularly because he was handed three cases with 4-4 ties that were originally argued when O’Connor was on the Court, without any of the many unanimous cases from that earlier period.)

Compared with Justice O’Connor, Alito’s affinity with all the conservatives grew substantially: Scalia, +13%; Kennedy, +15%; Thomas, +14%; and (though the comparison is inexact) Roberts (compared to O’Connor’s affinity with Rehnquist) +12%. By contrast, the affinity with the liberals was lower, sometimes substantially: Stevens, -15%; Souter, -5%; Ginsburg, -4%; Breyer, -14%.

In case you want to look at the actual numbers, they are available here.