Martin–Quinn scores or M-Q scores are dynamic metrics used to gauge the ideology of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice based on their voting record.
Posted on 08/09/2025 5:59:32 AM PDT by LouAvul
They gave us abortion and legalized hard core pornography. Among others.
Justices were Lewis Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist, Potter Stewart, William O. Douglas, Chief Justice Warren Burger, William Brennan, Byron White.
Which were good and which were liberal?
Rehnquist and White dissented.
That was my recollection as well. Renquist and white were the only good guys.
Martin–Quinn scores or M-Q scores are dynamic metrics used to gauge the ideology of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice based on their voting record.
Rhenquist was good. The rest not so much. Admittedly I don’t know much about White - he was before my time.
The old men and the institutions were all turning America far left during the 60s and 70s, and even earlier, the media has convinced America that it was a ground swell of the children and teenagers, which common sense should inform people how absurd that is, even if they don’t know about government and universities of post war America and the FDR years.
Wow. Given how bat-guano crazy Ginsberg was, I can’t imagine how hardcore communist Douglas must have been.
I don’t see how anyone could be more wrong than Souter or Ginsburg.
Interesting choice of the timeline for the ideological leanings of Supreme Court Justices.
The progressive revolution in the supreme court was well underway in 1935. McReynolds, for example, started serving in 1914, was appointed by uber-progressive Woodrow Wilson.
Powell and Blackmun were generally considered conservative at the times as well.
Lewis Powell and Harry Blackmun were generally considered conservative at the time as well, though Blackmun in particular started off as more conservative but veered leftward over time.
White, a Kennedy appointee, was smart, wrote clearly, and usually voted conservative. Douglas, Marshall, and Brennan are the three Leftist votes in that era.
Burger iced Earl Warren’s cake.
Rehnquist stemmed the tide a bit, with at least a minor return to Federalism. Roberts has been a somewhat ineffectual disaster thanks to Thomas and Alito.
Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion.
However, it also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interest in protecting both women's health and prenatal life.
It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States.
The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States.
Wonderful graph!
Do you really need people to tell you how to think?
You need to do some research on your own. It’s easy today with all of the AI assistants out there.
It interesting to see a general trend from conservative to liberal over time. Even with some recent appointments trending upwards there is a “general slant downwards. I guess it makes sense after the 60’s.
Thanks for posting this. I never heard of this rating. I guess I have some homework now.
Wonderful chart. Shows what we have all deduced: Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia were our only consistent champions, with Alito coming along nicely. Thomas should be Chief Justice.
The M-Q Scores are a cold, analytical approach to Justice bias. They cut through a lot of static. Please click here for more background and details
Many times, especially on FR, the new/Trump picks get torched and are declared liberals and Souters and Kennedys blah blah blah. More in that later.
Alternatively, the MSM pains the three leftists as “unbiased” which is utterly laughable.
Lets go to a more recent tote board:
For those who REALLY love data-driven analysis on page 11 of this document (beware…the doc was “Prepared for The NY Times”), there is a table of M-Q Scores for the Justices in 2014 vs in 2023.
We’ve gone from FIVE Justices with liberal scores (average of -2.228 for the big libs, excluding Kennedy the -0.226 squish) to only THREE lib Justices averaged at -2.866.
At the same time, the FOUR “conservatives” averaged 1.75 in 2014 vs SIX ‘conservatives” averaging 1.411 in 2023.
Thus, empirically, the liberals are more intense but they have a smaller blast radius. The conservatives are less intense but have a wider/majoroty blast radius. Also, the standard deviation for the conservative scores of 1.12 in 2023 vs 1.056 in 2014 suggests the conservatives are only slightly more divergent now vs then.
I will take Door #2023, Monty.
Class dismissed.
You need to do some research on your own. It’s easy today with all of the AI assistants out there.
That's a funny dichotomy, right there. Do you really need AI to tell you how to think? I'd rather listen to opinions of people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.