Posted on 02/16/2016 8:35:26 AM PST by Citizen Zed
With the death of Antonin Scalia on Saturday, the Supreme Court lost not only its longest-serving justice but also the most outspoken member of its conservative wing. A careful analysis of his tenure, however, shows that Scalia was almost never the most conservative justice on the court, and in fact moved leftward during the second half of his 30 years on the bench. With the exception of the 2014 term, he was usually in the majority in the court's rulings, and the future direction of the court pivots on his replacement.
While a discussion of Justice Scalia's most notable opinions1 is of substantial interest, we choose a different approach here. Instead of focusing on particular cases, we cast our attention to some of the general patterns that appeared in his voting behavior on the court over nearly three decades.
A first question is just how conservative Scalia was. To answer it, we turn to the ideological scores we developed (hence the name Martin-Quinn scores) to place the justices on an ideological continuum based on their votes in the cases in each term.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
THERE WILL BE NO REPLACEMENT OF SCALIA UNTIL THE NEW PRESIDENT IS SWORN IN.
This drum must be pounded, repeatedly. This is one of those things where people for whatever reason don’t seem to grasp the importance of. 48 hours after his death, it’s already back to the minor details of the presidential horserace.
If that indifference continues, McConnell and others under dark of night may let Obama appoint another Marxist. This is absolutely critical. There can be no wiggle room here. No hearings, no vote, nothing this year.
I always like scores and charts, if they have a modicum of credibility. I haven’t looked at the authors’ methods but will assume, for the moment at least, that they did a good job.
Glancing at the chart leaves me with the impression that Scalia was the second most conservative justice. Clarence Thomas was slightly more conservative. In other words, Scalia was pretty darned conservative.
Remember: SCALIA WROTE THE HELLER DECISION.
That's as 'conservative' as the Supreme Court gets these days.
You beat me to it. This is the start of the left’s pitch to show that an Obama pick is necessary since Scalia was a leftist anyway.
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