Justice Samuel Alito has surpassed Justice Clarence Thomas as the most conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to new data.
While Thomas has consistently been the most conservative justice of the current court for years, Alito had the edge this term, which saw major decisions on freedom of speech, student loans, and affirmative action.
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The data also show that the court is consistently more conservative with its 6-3 majority and Justice Brett Kavanaugh holding the spot as the ideological median justice.
Preliminary “ideological continuum” data from the “Martin-Quinn” scoring system, which uses data points such as voting records to measure judicial ideology, show Alito with about 2.5 points in the conservative column, while Thomas had about 2.3.
The scoring system is a dynamic one and changes with every data point. While the data date back to 1937, many of the highest scores on the conservative side — around 5.5 — are held by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who served on the court as both an associate justice and a chief justice from 1972 to 2005.
Many of the highest scores over time have been held by Rehnquist, Thomas, and former Justice Antonin Scalia, suggesting conservative justices have gotten more conservative in recent years. Former Justice James McReynolds, who served from 1914 to 1941, is also a top conservative contender.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett are all ranked closer to the Kavanaugh median than they are to Thomas’s and Alito’s positions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is by far the most liberal justice according to the data, ranking over 4 points on that side.
Last year, Alito authored the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing several states to issue restrictions on abortion ranging from weekslong protections for the unborn to outright bans on the procedure.
Although Alito authored the opinion tailored to abortion specifically, Thomas used the opportunity in a concurring opinion to call for the end of all substantive due process, which is a principle that allows the court to create new rights.
Thomas called for the court to take another look at cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut (right to contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (gay marriage), saying “any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ and the court has a “duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
This past term saw more conservative decisions by the high court, including 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, in which Gorsuch wrote that the state of Colorado could not force a website designer to create a website for a gay wedding.
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Affirmative action was also struck down at colleges in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, where Roberts wrote that Harvard and UNC could not continue using their race-based admissions process to achieve diversity goals.
Roberts also wrote the opinion in Biden v. Nebraska, where the court ruled that the secretary of education did not have the authority to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, ending the Biden administration’s first attempt to do so. Biden has promised to try again using a different law.
