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A comment on Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in my program (2013). Parent comment

Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by dvt on Friday April 01, 2022 @02:54PM (#30881954)
Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data of thousands and thousands of cases. Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum disagree just ~30% of the time. This shows that law is interpreted -- by smart, well-educated, professional justices -- very similarly across the board.
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Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by dragonwriter on Saturday April 02, 2022 @11:22AM (#30888890)
> Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data

It's perfectly in line with the data.

> Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum

Aren't that far apart because the American political spectrum is very narrow and the process for appointing and confirming judges has historically excluded judges from the extremes within that spectrum.

Much like people who mistake the pre-internet age of narrow media dominance as one of greater media objectivity, you are mistaking common bias with objectivity.

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Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by panda-giddiness on Friday April 01, 2022 @03:05PM (#30882069)
Sure, most cases aren't polarizing, but that doesn't mean that the law is objective -- the other 30% of cases proves as much.

Personally, I'd be more interesting in knowing how many cases split 5/4 (or 6/3) the obvious way versus how many cases were unanimous or nearly so.

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Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by dvt on Friday April 01, 2022 @03:22PM (#30882241)
9-0 is far more common than 5-4, this is pretty common knowledge for anyone that follows SCOTUS, but here's a source[1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...

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Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by panda-giddiness on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:55PM (#30884140)
Sorry, I see now that my comment was unclear. I mean of the 5/4 splits, I'd be curious what proportion of cases split 5/4 in the expected manner (Democratic vs Republican appointees) versus other alignments (e.g., Sotomayor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Ginsburg versus the rest).
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Re:Justice Clarence Thomas uncovered a seven-year-old bug in... by dragonwriter on Saturday April 02, 2022 @11:28AM (#30888936)
What you'd actually expect with political parties that aren't particularly cohesive or consistent over time isn't partisan consistency but that judges would vote consistently with the position of their appointing President on issues politically salient at the time of their appointment and less predictably otherwise.

Which, it turns out, is what they tend to do.

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