Alito now the Supreme Court’s most conservative justice, surpassing Thomas.
Justice Samuel Alito Surpasses Justice Clarence Thomas as the Most Conservative Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
According to new data, Justice Samuel Alito has taken the lead as the most conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, surpassing Justice Clarence Thomas. While Thomas has held this title for years, Alito’s conservative stance was more prominent this term, which featured significant decisions on freedom of speech, student loans, and affirmative action.
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The data also reveals that the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority and Justice Brett Kavanaugh as the ideological median justice, consistently leans towards conservatism. Preliminary data from the “Martin-Quinn” scoring system, which measures judicial ideology using voting records, places Alito at around 2.5 points in the conservative column, slightly ahead of Thomas at 2.3.
This scoring system is dynamic and changes with each data point. While the data dates back to 1937, the highest conservative scores, around 5.5, are held by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who served from 1972 to 2005 as both an associate justice and a chief justice. Rehnquist, along with Thomas and former Justice Antonin Scalia, consistently rank among the most conservative justices, indicating a trend of increasing conservatism among conservative justices in recent years. Former Justice James McReynolds, who served from 1914 to 1941, is also a notable conservative contender.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, align more closely with Kavanaugh’s ideological position than with Thomas and Alito. On the other end of the spectrum, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stands out as the most liberal justice, scoring over 4 points on that side.
Last year, Alito authored the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to impose various restrictions on abortion. In a concurring opinion, Thomas went further and called for the end of all substantive due process, urging the court to reconsider cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut (right to contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (gay marriage), stating that any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous” and the court has a “duty to correct the error” established in those precedents.
This past term witnessed several conservative decisions by the high court, including 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, where Gorsuch argued that the state of Colorado could not compel a website designer to create a website for a gay wedding. Affirmative action was also struck down in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, with Roberts writing that Harvard and UNC could not continue using race-based admissions processes to achieve diversity goals.
Roberts also authored the opinion in Biden v. Nebraska, where the court ruled that the secretary of education lacked the authority to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, effectively ending the Biden administration’s initial attempt to do so. However, President Biden has vowed to pursue alternative avenues to address the issue.
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