Really See Me

There are, of course, bright spots on the national landscape. One of these is the Supreme Court, which just ended a term suggesting that, in the words of University of Chicago law professor Tom Ginsburg, the justices are seeking to demonstrate “that, in at least one American institution, polarization has its limits.” And the Court, after all, is not just any institution, but one whose decisions have the potential to exacerbate the societal divide.

Nearly half of all the decisions the Court issued in this year’s session — 29 out of 67 — were unanimous, and only 11 cases were decided by a vote of 5–4. In one case at the term’s very end, the very conservative Clarence Thomas joined the Court’s three liberal members in dissent. Professor Ginsburg writes:

Surprising coalitions among justices, careful case selection, and relatively few decisions dividing the court along ideological lines point to an institution that is trying to bolster its nonpartisan legitimacy. The justices seem to be refuting the idea that they are partisan actors in an ostensibly nonpartisan institution.

To be sure, the justices are not always nonpartisan or quiescent…. So, too, have several high-profile controversial cases that split the justices six to three along ideological lines…. On the whole, however, these ideological decisions don’t represent the court’s recent conduct. If anything unites the justices, it is the view that their internal processes should not be politicized and the court needs autonomy to properly perform its role in our constitutional system. These beliefs were abundantly clear in the court’s most recent term.