Why the US Supreme Court is Increasingly Partisan

Two leading scholars, William & Mary Law Professor NealDevins and Ohio State Political Science Professor Lawrence Baum, write that “Starting in 2010 the Supreme Court has divided into two partisan ideological blocs, with all the Court’s Democratic appointees on the liberal side and its Republican appointees on the conservative side.” 

Their article, Split Definitive: How Party PolarizationTurned the Supreme Court into a Partisan Court, uses “original empirical research to establish that this partisan division is unprecedented in the Court’s history.”  They “show that it is linked to growing partisan polarization among political elites,” which has “prompted presidents — for the first time ever — to make ideology the dominant factor in appointing Justices.”