What is it about?
The conservative legal movement has substantially advanced its agenda in American law and politics, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court. To understand how this happened, we analyzed almost 25,000 votes cast by Supreme Court justices. We show that justices connected to the Federalist Society - perhaps the most prominent organization in the conservative legal movement - are both more conservative and more consistently conservative than even their Republican colleagues.
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Why is it important?
Since justices in the contemporary era serve on the Court for an average of about a quarter century, we are likely to see the Court’s conservative justices – who are all connected to the Federalist Society – continue to advance the conservative legal movement’s agenda for decades to come.
Perspectives
We hope that this article will help people understand that Supreme Court judges in America are not neutral decision makers. Rather, they are political actors with ideological goals they pursue on the bench.
Paul Collins
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The consistency of Federalist Society-affiliated U.S. supreme court justices, PLOS One, August 2025, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329692.
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