Paste your essay in here…Grant Tyrolt
Professor Boyd
POLS 4760
27 April 2018
Changes in the Wind
October 3, 2005, President George W Bush held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden where he announced Harriet Miers as his Supreme Court nominee stating how she was “not going to change, that 20 years from now she’ll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today,” surprising nobody in the audience. The president was reciting a belief held by most of the public and scholars— that justices have crafted their ideological beliefs over decades of work and would adhere to those beliefs during their time on the bench (Epstein 2007). While this may be a commonly held belief by most, there are not only those who are skeptical of the idea of solid unmoving ideology, but claim that ideological drift among justices is not only plausible, but common. This begs the question, are justices’ ideologies consistent during their supreme court tenure, or are they ever changing? Using Martin-Quinn scores and scholarly articles from esteemed political scientist, the evidence supporting the dissenting opinion could not be more apparent: contrary to Bush’s claim, not only do justices’ show ideological drift during their tenure, but most justices’ end up retiring more liberal than the day they were sworn in.
To better understand ideological drift of justices’, the sample runs from 1935-2016. In order to analyze individual justices ideologies, Martin-Quinn scores were used as a tool to determine justices’ ideological position from year to year. The dependent variable being measured is the year to year shift in their Martin-Quinn score. What are Martin-Quinn scores? Developed by Andrew Quinn, professor of law and chair of the political science department at Washington University in St. Louis, the Martin-Quinn score is a tool which averages a justices’ decision and ranks their ideology on a -8 to 8 scale, negative scores meaning more liberal and positive scores for conservative. In order to observe the ideological shift in the court over the past half century, their yearly Martin-Quinn score will be recorded chronologically to better see ideological drift across justices’ entire tenure. To better understand the results of the scores and their meaning, scholarly articles by political scientists are used to better help understand ideological drift in the court and the underlying causes (Epstein 2007).
Why do president’s search for individuals that match their ideological preferences? While a president’s term in office can only last at most eight years, a supreme court justice is a lifetime tenure. This has been referred to by scholars as “entrenchment”, or the idea that Presidents are able to extend their ideological reach into the supreme court not only at the time when the justice is appointed, but for potentially decades after. An example of this is Richard Nixon’s appointment of William Rehnquist. While Nixon resigned from office in 1974, William Rehnquist continued serving as a associate justice on the court, until he eventually became the court’s Chief Justice in 1986 after the previous Chief Justice Warren Burger retired. While idealistically, presidents should selected appointees who are very qualified or might help them win voters in some key demographics, the thought of a lasting legacy has clouted presidential judgement (Johnson 2017).
When measuring ideology among the court, political scientist such as Sidney Ulmer, show the importance of not summarizing ideological voting based on a single percentage, but rather examine voting percentages over each term. For her study, Ulmer analyzed the voting patterns of Justices Hugo L. Black and William Douglas on civil liberty cases brought before the court. The studies lead to Ulmer to conclude that her two justice sample showed that there was substantial change over time: both justices started as moderates on the court, but over time became increasingly willing to support litigants alleging a violations of their rights. The two figures below illustrate Ulmer’s findings.
As can be seen from the diagram, justices’ ideology can change drastically. When observing Justice Black’s scores, it is important to see his ideology shift from moderate in the late 1930s, to fairly liberal by 1960, and then sudden revert back to his staunch republican beliefs (Epstein 2007).
Even justices that were historically considered stable in the ideology have been looked back upon, and under further investigation, show to be less consistent than once thought. Research by esteemed political scientist Harold J. Spaeth in his article, Judicial restraint of of Mr. Justice Frankfurt — Myth or Reality?, help further open the case of ideological drift among even the most stable of justices. Spaeth was able to debunk the constantly repeated claim that Justice Frankfurt was one of the “most ardent and consistent advocates of judicial restraint.” While there is no denying that justice Frankfurt was ardent, consistency was definitely not one of the Frankfurt’s top priority. When Frankfurt was first admitted to the bench, his ideology placed him just left of the median justice, who at the time was Chief Justice Stone, rather than siding with ideological extremist such as Hugo Black for liberal ideology and Justice James Reynolds for the conservative end of the spectrum. Frankfurt remained consistent with his beliefs for his first term, but seemingly from the beginning of his second term there are clear indicators of his ideology beginning to drift right. By the end of his Supreme Court tenure, Frankfurt had gone from slightly to the left of the median justice to being one of the most conservative justices to ever be on the court. He was seen as so extreme and consistent that he has been thought of as further right on the ideological spectrum than the embodiment of conservatism, Chief Justice William Rehnquist. If one of the most consistent justices in the court’s history fell victim to ideological drift, is should be apparent that the other justices are just as susceptible as well (Spaeth 1964).
With the help of the University of Michigan, Supreme Court Justice Martin-Quinn scores have been plotted annually for each individual justice below.
Upon first glance, the erratic lines show the constant and ever changing ideologies justices’ possesed from year to year. From 1935-1955, During the Hughes, Stone, and Vinson courts, there seems to have been an ideological drift towards conservatism. Meg Jacobs, author of American History Now, offers some context of american politics during the period to better explain this sudden shift towards a more conservative court. While the 1930s was the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, and with it the rise of New Deal liberalism, the mid to late 1940s saw a dramatic shift in political ideology among americans. Groups, such as southerners, wealthy individuals, and businessmen, began mobilizing under the banner of the Republican party to end the “Roosevelt Revolution” (McGirr 2011).
After Chief Justice Vinson’s retirement, there was a large shift in ideological diversity among the court. This change can be held in part to the ideological drift of the court’s new Chief Justice, Earl Warren. While Chief Justice Warren began as a moderate, his Martin-Quinn scores show a sharp turn towards a more liberal ideology. According to Ben Johnson, author of Ideology and Agenda-Setting at the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justices’ ability to circulate a preliminary list of cases at the weekly conference without needing others’ approval statistically increases the likelihood of their cases being granted (Johnson 2017). Given this, and the addition of liberal leaning justices such as Brennan and Goldberg, the rise of the liberal majority was inevitable by the early 1960s. If the strategic model holds true, justices’ desire to win would have weight on their rulings given the liberal majority that controlled of the Supreme Court for most of the 1960s.
Past 1970, a piculare trend begins to surface among justices: most justices retire far more liberal than they had entered the court. This trend shift from beginning to end ideology shows a nearly 1.5 to 2 point shift in justices’ Martin-Quinn scores. Even William Rehnquist, considered by many to be one of the most conservative justices to ever sit on the bench, shifted from an original 3.674 to a 1.684 when he retired (Farnsworth 2007). While this shift pales in comparison to Justice William Douglas who shifted from a staunch liberal ideology, flirted with becoming a moderate liberal, and then went off the deep end to becoming the undisputed most liberal justices in the Supreme Court’s history, it is by no means insignificant (Bailey 2017). Many justices ideological shifts are attributed to what political scientist have called the “freshman effect”. The freshman effect is defined as a short period of uncharacteristic behavior followed by stability in their preferences (Bowen & Scheb 1994).
The data shows that ideology is ever changing, but is there an underlying explanation for this? Some suggest the current political climate in washington helps influence justices’ ideology. This theory is known as, “strategic adaptation”. For example, Chief Justice Burger’s most liberal terms were during the Carter administration, yet apexed in conservative ideology during the Reagan administration. There has been a correlation found between ideological changes before and after a justices’ tenth term. Historically, justices have not been observed to make major ideological shifts within their first ten terms, especially if the president who appointed them serves two terms. This theory is exhibited best by the actions of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice O’Connor, nominated by president Ronald Reagan, was very conservative for her first decade on the court. After the tenth term, O’Connor took a considerable turn towards liberalism and remain at that ideological level for the first of her tenure (Bailey 2017).
While presidents would love to tell you that their justices’ ideology is the most sound and stable every put on the court, there could be nothing farther from the truth. Due to the nature of the Supreme Court, justices have more latitude in personable ways and work where factors such as stare decisis can induce anxiety in the political sphere. While recent models have increased the public’s ability to accurately observe every Justices’ ideology, there are still some small issues, such as idiosyncratic deviations, can have huge effects on the courts average ideology scores due to the small sample size. The Supreme Court is one of the oldest, and most resistant to change, institution in the United States. While the Supreme Court may consistently stick with practices it has used since its founding, it has been unable to secure a stable ideology for long. Due to Supreme Court cases sometimes having monumental society impact and justices’ interpretations of the Constitution constantly shifting, the Supreme Court will continue to be one of the most fascinating and unique player in american politics for centuries to come.