John Roberts: Conservative or not?

Much has been made of this recent Supreme Court nominee and the presumption seems to be that he is somewhere to the right of moderate and liberals are calling him ultra-conservative. Let's look at the Supreme Court's history of nominations

 

John Paul Stevens: 100% against the death penalty... Ford appointee (A Republican)... Has been labeled as a liberal

Sandra Day O'Connor: Moderate to slightly conservative... Reagan appointee (A Republican)

Anthony Kennedy: Moderate to slightly conservative... Reagan appointee

David Souter: Moderate to slightly liberal... Bush appointee (the first one... a Republican)

 

(This website has a table (compiled by themselves so consider it with a grain of salt) that purports to break down various rulings by each of the justics based on whether they came down on the "conservative" side or the "liberal" side... They even go so far as to break things down based on economic vs. civil liberty issues.)

 

The right has been kind of hit or miss with its appointees... In fact, the court has had only 2 of its current justices (Breyer and Ginsburg) appointed by Democrats (Clinton for both).

 

And now we learn that John Roberts helped win landmark litigation against a Colorado constitutional amendment that would have prevented laws protecting gays from discrimination (a truly spectacular contrivance... a constituitional amendment barring equal protection laws... yowza!). I'm really starting to like this guy because, the more we look at things, the more it appears that we're replacing a moderate with a moderate. The court's dynamics won't change drastically (although they may change on certain issues). We'll still have Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas vs. Stevens, Breyer and Ginsburg with 3 moderating voices with swing votes.