At Liberty Law Blog, John McGinnis: Partisanship versus Jurisprudence in Judicial Polarization (commenting on this article by Adam Liptak in the New York Times). From the beginning:
For the moment I will accept Liptak’s statistics and focus on his explanations. Liptak argues that partisan polarization [on the Supreme Court] is the result of increased polarization more generally, as Republicans and Democrats move to become cohesive ideological parties, distant in their policy preferences. Moreover, Liptak argues Presidents have become better at predicting justices’ votes. These factors are certainly relevant, but I think they miss one important change. Originalism and its often close cousin in statutory interpretation — textualism — today create a larger gulf in jurisprudential approaches to the Constitution and statutes between Republican and Democratic appointees.
Posted at 9:52 AM