Supreme Court that Left calls biased was near unanimous 62% of the time

The Supreme Court is once again under attack from those calling for packing, or even eliminating, the institution as hopelessly ideological and divided.The Philadelphia Inquirer recently proclaimed that “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority keeps choosing ideology over impartiality.” Other media outlets reported “devastating” polling showing the Court as unpopular and losing institutional respect.It is all clearly alarming — despite being entirely untrue.Looking at the actual rulings disproves the argument of a “biased” court.The Court ruled unanimously in more than 44% of cases, slightly up from the prior year.

When you add the roughly 11% of opinions that were 8-1 and 6% that were 7-1 or 7-2, the rate of unanimous or nearly unanimous jumps to 62%.In over 77% of cases, there was no ideological split in the resulting opinions.While slightly up, the ideological split emphasized in the coverage is found in less than a quarter of the cases.Now look at those supposed ideologically besieged liberal justices.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had the lowest percentage in the majority in the last term.

However, she was still in the majority in 72% of cases.Jackson even agreed with Justice Samuel Alito in 49% of the cases and with Justice Clarence Thomas in half of the cases.The narrative also ignores major losses by the Trump administration in cases dealing with birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, tariffs, the Federal Reserve Board members and even Trump’s personal defamation case.Just this week, the court issued a ruling that President Trump called “a big loss for Republicans” in rejecting a mail-in ballot change for the next election.Those cases saw conservatives voting with their liberal colleagues.Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch are generally viewed as “in play” in a variety of cases in creating mixed majorities.

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