JUDICIAL ACTIVISM….Via Crooked Timber, here’s a New York Times op-ed from a few months ago that provides a metric for one particular type of “judicial activism”: the willingness of a justice to overturn congressional legislation. It turns out that it’s conservatives who are most likely to strike down laws and liberals who are most like to show deference and let them stand. Here are the numbers since 1994:
Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O?Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %
So if Samuel Alito really is to the right of every current justice on the court, what does that mean? That he’ll vote to overturn 80% of the legislation that makes it to his desk?
