Yesterday, we looked at the evidence of a centrist voting bloc at the Court between 2005 and 2009, consisting of Chief Justice Thomas and Justices Garman and Karmeier, frequently joined by Justice Fitzgerald. Today, we look at the agreement rates among the remainder of the Justices.
Justice Burke initially had quite high agreement rates with nearly all members of the Court, but after several years, she was most closely identified with Justice Freeman (77.8%, 89.5%, 95.7%.) Similarly, Justice Karmeier’s agreement rate with the other Justices was relatively high initially, but dipped slightly after a few years. Justice Kilbride, on the other hand, had a comparatively low agreement rate with most other members of the Court throughout this second five-year period.
Next week, we’ll conclude our look at the years between 2005 and 2009 by looking for the swing voters in several frequently heard areas of the law. Then we’ll launch into the final five years of our study, looking at the Court’s voting dynamics in civil cases between 2010 and 2014.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Theresa Thompson (no changes).