by Matt Barr

Final OT 2004 Court stats

SCOTUSblog has October Term 2004 voting stats linked here. (My highly unofficial ones from April are here and here).

Peas in a pod: You would never guess. Rehnquist and Kennedy "agreed in full" 77 percent of the time (out of the 69 cases Rehnquist participated in). This pairing edged Rehnquist/O'Connor (72 percent), Souter/Ginsburg (71), Stevens/Ginsburg (70), O'Connor/Kennedy (70), Stevens/Souter (69), Ginsburg/Breyer (69) and Scalia/Thomas (68) (yes, I was dragging the list out till I got to them).

"Agreed in full, in part or in the judgment": Rehnquist/Thomas, 91 percent. Souter/Ginsburg 88 percent, Scalia/Thomas 88, Stevens/Souter 86, Ginsburg/Breyer 86. O'Connor/Breyer (?!) 83 percent, just as an aside.

Odd Couple: Percent of times "disagreed completely": Rehnquist/Stevens 45 percent, followed by Rehnquist/Souter 41, Thomas/Ginsburg 40, Stevens/Scalia 40, Stevens/Thomas 40.

Least likely to "disagree completely": Rehnquist/Thomas, nine percent (this is just 100 minus "agreed in full, in part or in the judgment" above).

Quote from Goldstein, Howe:

In this Term’s 5-4 decisions, Justices Souter and Scalia were in the majority in 15 of 24 decisions. Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg were each in the majority 14 times, while Justices Kennedy and Breyer were in the majority 13 times. Justice Stevens was in the majority 12 times and Chief Justice Rehnquist 11 times. This relatively even distribution represents a departure from OT03, when Justice O’Connor was in the majority in 16 of 21 cases, followed by Justices Kennedy (15), Thomas (14), and Scalia (11)....

The Court’s conservative majority (WHR, SOC, AS, AMK, CT) held together in only 5 of 24 (21%) of the 5-4 cases this Term. This represents a notable drop from the previous two terms, when the conservative majority held together in nearly half of the 5-4 cases, and a departure from the relatively higher levels of coherence observed in previous years of the Rehnquist Court.

Emphasis added. The four other justices, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, each voted together in a 5-4 case eight times. In the Term's "leading cases" per SCOTUSblog, excluding unanimous cases, at least three of the four voted together six out of 12 times; at least four of the five "conservative" Justices, three out of 12 (at least three of the five, four out of 12).

There is no "conservative bloc" on the Court.

Each Justice was the member of a 5-4 majority between 12 and 14 times, which is a little remarkable. (Rehnquist always voted if a case was close, so his reduced workload wouldn't have affected this.)

Thomas was the busiest Justice this term, writing 34 opinions. Three Justices wrote 19, the least except for Rehnquist's 9, which is low even for the number of cases he participated in, but certainly understandable given his health situation. Thomas also wrote the most dissents, 14 (Breyer's four was lowest but for Rehnquist's one).

Stevens cast the most dissenting votes, 21. Three Justices cast 11, the least. Rehnquist cast 16. Stevens was the sole dissenter three times; Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas were once each.

Tom Goldstein thanks Brian Fletcher, Anisha Dasgupta, and Katie Tafolla-Young for their work on the stats, and you should, too.

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