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onenote

(42,373 posts)
Mon Jun 18, 2012, 12:11 PM Jun 2012

The unpredictability of the Supreme Court

I'm not suggesting that the outcome of the ACA case will not fall along the expected lines (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Kennedy on one side and Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer) on the other. But one needs to be careful in making too many assumptions about the court and its members. Case in point. Four opinions were issued today, three of them 5-4 votes. One of the three divided along the lines described above. But the divisions in the other two did not fit the pattern that many people assume the court almost always follows. In one case, the majority consisted of Sotomayor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Kagan (with Ginsburg joining Roberts, Alito and Breyer in dissent). In the other, the majority (albeit for differing reasons) consisted of Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy and Breyer, with Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Scalia united in dissent. A fourth case was an 8-1 decision, with Sotomayor as the dissenter.

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