5 ms·
It looks like US supreme court is as clearly divided as the US political parties. A large number of US supreme court critical decisions are 5-4 decisions. And a
by enitihas 7y ago
It looks like US supreme court is as clearly divided as the US political parties. A large number of US supreme court critical decisions are 5-4 decisions. And a large majority of them have clear partisan divides. If only Obama had his chance to appoint Scalia's successor, the US supreme court might have been very different.
- hackeraccount 7y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/?utm_term=.6efc49b027e0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0... "since 2000 a unanimous decision has been more likely than any other result — averaging 36 percent of all decisions. Even when the court did not reach a unanimous judgment, the justices often secured overwhelming majorities, with 7-to-2 or 8-to-1 judgments making up about 15 percent of decisions. The 5-to-4 decisions, by comparison, occurred in 19 percent of cases"
- enitihas 7y agoI am not saying 5-4 is the most likely result, just that even 19% of decisions being 5-4 is huge.
- brlewis 7y agoI don't think that's huge, considering that questions with clear-cut answers shouldn't make it to the Supreme Court.
- tomatotomato37 7y agoThere's only 5 combinations of yes/no votes you can get with 9 indistinct entities, so 20% isn't unusual at all
- jakelazaroff 7y agoTrue, although if you consider each entity distinct there are 512 combinations and the one split along partisan lines is probably vastly overrepresented among other 5-4 possibilities.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoThese last batch of rulings have had unlikely or unusual combinations of both liberals and conservatives. The case for gerrymandering was decided by Ginsburg, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch. Here's two more cases not along traditional partisan lines: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/733408135/supreme-court-justices-split-along-unexpected-lines-in-three-cases https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/733408135/supreme-court-justi...
- ApolloFortyNine 7y agoIt'd still be just 5-4, but the other way. It doesn't fix the 5-4 decisions, it just changes them to be the decision you agree with.
- enitihas 7y agoIt doesn't fix those. That's why I said the court would be different, not better or worse.
- homonculus1 7y ago"If only" implies the speaker longs for whatever thing to happen or have happened, that such thing would be better.