If Obama Loses: The Courts

[BzaDem]

24. Have you actually read many of their Supreme Court opinions?

I have (though obviously not all of them).

In the vast majority of contentious cases, they both side with the other liberals. The study you quote is primarily based on her majority opinions on the second circuit court of appeals -- not her Supreme Court opinions.

Looking at appeals court opinions is folly. Appeals court judges are bound by Supreme Court precedent. That precedent is often conservative, given the make-up of the Supreme Court over the past two decades. One cannot possibly be considered "conservative" because they merely follow conservative higher-court precedent, as they are bound by law to do.

Of course a liberal jurist is going to be more liberal in their dissenting opinions. When the majority of the court is conservative (as with the Supreme Court), or the higher-court precedent is conservative (as is the case for lower court judges), of course majority opinions are going to be more conservative than dissenting opinons. Otherwise they wouldn't be majority opinions. (Though as far as Supreme Court majority opinions are concerned, I am curious which divided opinions you consider conservative.)

With that standard, on a hypothetical court divided 8-1 (8 conservatives and 1 liberal), the liberal wouldn't actually be liberal, because all their liberal opinions would (of course) be dissents.

Speaking of dissents, Sotomayor wrote a ferocious dissent in the Miranda warning case (joined by the other 3 liberals), and wrote a solo dissent in a case involving a prisoner with AIDS protesting by refusing to take his medication (among other liberal solo dissents).