Can't stop writing about the Supreme Court

 I will move on to other topics soon, but I found one more point about the Supreme Court that I want to mention.  In July 1991, the Gallup Poll asked "From what you know about Clarence Thomas, as a Supreme Court justice, do you think he would be too liberal, too conservative, or just about right?"  7% said too liberal, 20% too conservative, 46% about right, and 27% didn't know.  The same question has been asked about most of the other Supreme Court nominees since then (in all cases, very soon after they were nominated, before the hearings started).  The figure shows the expected bias (absolute value of "too liberal" minus "too conservative").

There's a clear tendency to increase, which can be seen as another aspect of political polarization, but there are a few nominees who depart from the trend.  Perceived bias was relatively low for Merrick Garland (6% too conservative, 25% too liberal) and high for Amy Coney Barrett (43% too conservative, 4% too liberal), and also for Elena Kagan (6% too conservative, 40% too liberal).  I was surprised by the results for Kagan--I didn't remember much controversy about her.  Her "don't knows" were unusually low, only 4%.  That may be because the question followed a number of questions that gave information about he.  The next figure shows the percent saying "about right":

There's no trend here, and Kagan doesn't stand out, but once again Garland and Barrett are exceptions.  The results for Garland aren't surprising, since he was perceived as a moderate.  But why does Barrett stand out, when Neil Gorsuch didn't?  Both were conservatives, both were nominated by Trump, and you might have expected Democrats to be especially negative about Gorsuch since he was filling the seat that had opened under Obama.  

The answer may be the justices they were replacing--Scalia for Gorsuch and Ginsburg for Barrett.  Replacing Scalia with Gorsuch didn't have much impact on the ideology of the court, but replacing Ginsburg by Barrett moved it substantially to the right.   After Scalia died, Gallup asked if you would like a justice "who would make the Supreme Court more liberal than it currently is, more conservative than it currently is, or keep the court as it was?"  32% said more liberal, 29% more conservative, and 37% keep it as it was.  Of course, replacing Scalia with Garland would have made the court more liberal, but he was regarded as more moderate than others Obama might have chosen, so people who wanted to keep things as they were would have been happy.  Unfortunately, the question about how people would like the Court to change was not asked in 2020, but if there was a similar desire to keep things about the same, replacing a liberal justice with a solidly conservative one would be unpopular.  

Like Barrett, Clarence Thomas moved the court well to the right--he replaced Thurgood Marshall, who was among the most liberal justices.  The fact that people were pretty satisfied with his nomination may reflect general trust, or maybe many people wanted the court to move to the right at that time (I'll try to look at that in a future post).  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]