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He might've gotten more chatty during the Zoom era but Thomas went from no talking to some talking after Scalia died. They voted together most of the time, and

He might've gotten more chatty during the Zoom era but Thomas went from no talking to some talking after Scalia died. They voted together most of the time, and Scalia sure did enough talking for the both of them. See: https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-10-year-streak-question/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/supreme-court-claren... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-scotus-agreement-rates.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-s...

todd8 5y ago
There's an interesting graphic that shows how often the Justices vote the same or different, see [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-scotus-agreement-rates.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-s...
- peeters 5y ago
  It's pretty interesting that the most "polarized" judges still only disagreed 34% of the time.
  - dvt 5y ago
    Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task and SCOTUS isn't as politically partisan as the media often portrays it. Justices are consummate professionals, friends, and co-workers, not partisan hacks. Ginsburg and Scalia were famously extremely good friends.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Unfortunately that changed in 2016-2020 with the McConnell doctrine. The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth.
      - jiscariot 5y ago
        > The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth. Can you expand more on this? From my understanding, Gorsuch and Barrett have a solid pedigree, while there are questions around Kavanaugh's.
        CuriouslyC 5y ago
        Barrett is an ideological sock puppet who's more interested in forcing others to conform to her morality than objectively interpreting the law.
        rayiner 5y ago
        She’s an “ideological sock puppet” because she might vote to Roe, which would simply make American constitutional law the same as … France or Italy (which, contemporaneously with Casey determined that abortion was an issue for the legislature). Madness!
        CuriouslyC 5y ago
        If you read her questions in that case her bias and attempt to set up justification for her own preconceived opinion were clear.
        rayiner 5y ago
        It’s not a “bias” to believe the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to privacy that protects abortion. That’s just being able to read. Pretty much nobody seriously believes in the logic underlying Roe. It’s the Lochner of left-wing jurisprudence. Even Ginsberg criticized the case, and offered a different justification for abortion rights. At this point it’s just stare decisis and ideology sustaining the precedent. Accusations of “bias” and “preconceived opinion” are absolutely hilarious coming from the left. Republican judges regularly get wobbly and vote for the liberal position (Obergefell, Bostock, Woman’s Health. The liberal judges, however, always vote party line in these cases.)
    - rectang 5y ago
      Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political.
      - SllX 5y ago
        Sure, but it’s a policy choice—a more polite way of saying a political choice—to treat SCOTUS like a legal institution rather than a political one. It is a legal institution, not a political one in the way Congress is explicitly a political institution that writes laws, but the seat holders are not apolitical machines who merely objectively look at what the law says because part of why they are there is that they have perspectives and they exercise this valuable thing called professional judgement that in the private sector people pay a lot of money for. Judicial philosophies which defer to the text as it is written (textualism) or interpret the text as it would have been understood in its original time and place (originalism) are treated with suspicion and politicized by those who believe the text should be interpreted through a modern reading and understanding of the text (living constitutionalism). SCOTUS will never be perfectly apolitical, not while it is staffed by people as I expect it to in perpetuity, but it should not also succumb to becoming a political institution instead of a legal one.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political. Maybe, it's definitely false, in any case.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task No, it's not. It is highly subjective; the various canons of legal construction all require subjective judgements, and selecting and prioritizing between them is subjective, and that's not even getting to the degree to which in practice those canons are invoked as post hoc rationalizations for decisions reflecting a jurists ideological and personal biases on the matter at issue.
      - dvt 5y ago
        Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data of thousands and thousands of cases. Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum disagree just ~30% of the time. This shows that law is interpreted -- by smart, well-educated, professional justices -- very similarly across the board.
        panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sure, most cases aren't polarizing, but that doesn't mean that the law is objective -- the other 30% of cases proves as much. Personally, I'd be more interesting in knowing how many cases split 5/4 (or 6/3) the obvious way versus how many cases were unanimous or nearly so.
        dvt 5y ago
        9-0 is far more common than 5-4, this is pretty common knowledge for anyone that follows SCOTUS, but here's a source[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
        panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sorry, I see now that my comment was unclear. I mean of the 5/4 splits, I'd be curious what proportion of cases split 5/4 in the expected manner (Democratic vs Republican appointees) versus other alignments (e.g., Sotomayor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Ginsburg versus the rest).

todd8 5y ago

There's an interesting graphic that shows how often the Justices vote the same or different, see [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-scotus-agreement-rates.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-s...

peeters 5y ago
It's pretty interesting that the most "polarized" judges still only disagreed 34% of the time.
- dvt 5y ago
  Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task and SCOTUS isn't as politically partisan as the media often portrays it. Justices are consummate professionals, friends, and co-workers, not partisan hacks. Ginsburg and Scalia were famously extremely good friends.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Unfortunately that changed in 2016-2020 with the McConnell doctrine. The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth.
    - jiscariot 5y ago
      > The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth. Can you expand more on this? From my understanding, Gorsuch and Barrett have a solid pedigree, while there are questions around Kavanaugh's.
      - CuriouslyC 5y ago
        Barrett is an ideological sock puppet who's more interested in forcing others to conform to her morality than objectively interpreting the law.
        rayiner 5y ago
        She’s an “ideological sock puppet” because she might vote to Roe, which would simply make American constitutional law the same as … France or Italy (which, contemporaneously with Casey determined that abortion was an issue for the legislature). Madness!
        CuriouslyC 5y ago
        If you read her questions in that case her bias and attempt to set up justification for her own preconceived opinion were clear.
        rayiner 5y ago
        It’s not a “bias” to believe the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to privacy that protects abortion. That’s just being able to read. Pretty much nobody seriously believes in the logic underlying Roe. It’s the Lochner of left-wing jurisprudence. Even Ginsberg criticized the case, and offered a different justification for abortion rights. At this point it’s just stare decisis and ideology sustaining the precedent. Accusations of “bias” and “preconceived opinion” are absolutely hilarious coming from the left. Republican judges regularly get wobbly and vote for the liberal position (Obergefell, Bostock, Woman’s Health. The liberal judges, however, always vote party line in these cases.)
  - rectang 5y ago
    Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political.
    - SllX 5y ago
      Sure, but it’s a policy choice—a more polite way of saying a political choice—to treat SCOTUS like a legal institution rather than a political one. It is a legal institution, not a political one in the way Congress is explicitly a political institution that writes laws, but the seat holders are not apolitical machines who merely objectively look at what the law says because part of why they are there is that they have perspectives and they exercise this valuable thing called professional judgement that in the private sector people pay a lot of money for. Judicial philosophies which defer to the text as it is written (textualism) or interpret the text as it would have been understood in its original time and place (originalism) are treated with suspicion and politicized by those who believe the text should be interpreted through a modern reading and understanding of the text (living constitutionalism). SCOTUS will never be perfectly apolitical, not while it is staffed by people as I expect it to in perpetuity, but it should not also succumb to becoming a political institution instead of a legal one.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political. Maybe, it's definitely false, in any case.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task No, it's not. It is highly subjective; the various canons of legal construction all require subjective judgements, and selecting and prioritizing between them is subjective, and that's not even getting to the degree to which in practice those canons are invoked as post hoc rationalizations for decisions reflecting a jurists ideological and personal biases on the matter at issue.
    - dvt 5y ago
      Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data of thousands and thousands of cases. Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum disagree just ~30% of the time. This shows that law is interpreted -- by smart, well-educated, professional justices -- very similarly across the board.
      - panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sure, most cases aren't polarizing, but that doesn't mean that the law is objective -- the other 30% of cases proves as much. Personally, I'd be more interesting in knowing how many cases split 5/4 (or 6/3) the obvious way versus how many cases were unanimous or nearly so.
        dvt 5y ago
        9-0 is far more common than 5-4, this is pretty common knowledge for anyone that follows SCOTUS, but here's a source[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
        panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sorry, I see now that my comment was unclear. I mean of the 5/4 splits, I'd be curious what proportion of cases split 5/4 in the expected manner (Democratic vs Republican appointees) versus other alignments (e.g., Sotomayor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Ginsburg versus the rest).