The Supreme Court Had A Few Surprises This Year. That Doesn’t Make It Moderate – By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Holly Fuong (FiveThirtyEight) / July 7, 2023
The second full term under the most conservative Supreme Court in modern history concluded last week, with major rulings on affirmative action, President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program and anti-discrimination law.
The term as a whole wasn’t as dramatic as last year’s, which culminated with the politically and legally seismic decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, one of the most recognized precedents of the last two generations. But initial data from the term makes a couple of things clear. First, the conservative bloc isn’t entirely predictable. The six Republican-appointed justices are still not on the same page about how far or how fast to go when it comes to right-wing priorities, and there are at least a few members of the Republican-appointed bloc who are unwilling to deliver an unbroken slate of wins for Republicans every year. Second, the court is still deeply polarized and the conservatives at the center are in the driver’s seat — which means the conservative revolution that began with Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment in 2018 and accelerated with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment in 2020 is unlikely to reverse anytime soon.
In other words — conservatives might be disappointed that they didn’t get everything they asked for this year. But that might say as much about the radicalness of the cases that the court is taking as it does about the justices’ ideology.
