Epstein & Segal on the Dynamics of Supreme Court Ideology
The Washington Post has a nifty op/ed, Changing Room The Court’s Dynamics Have a Way of Altering a Justice’s Approach to the Law by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal
- Samuel Alito, in all likelihood, will be a conservative justice and will reach decisions in accord with that label. But there’s a “but” — actually several, all recent or current justices: David Souter, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, to name five justices for whom, to greater or lesser extent, ideological labels proved misleading. The “but” offers important insights into why some nominees, once they become justices, sometimes don’t behave as predicted and how the court’s dynamics can affect their views.
In the case of Souter, initial judgments about how he might vote were downright wrong. The clear expectation, based largely on his lower court record, was that Souter would be a rather consistent conservative voter — even more to the right than Reagan appointees Kennedy and O’Connor, at the time of their nominations. Souter, of course, is a rather consistent voter — on the court’s liberal wing.
Epstein & Segal are among the best political scientists who study judicial attitudes. Check it out!