The Next President Will Split Up the Supreme Court’s Factions
The bench is currently divided between three liberals, three arch-conservatives, and three centrist conservatives, leading to shifting alliances — and an opportunity for the next president.
Divided.
Source: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images. Illustration: Christine Vanden Byllaardt“All Gaul is divided into three parts,” Julius Caesar famously wrote. The same is now clearly true of the Supreme Court. And like Gaul before Caesar, the three parts are all weakened by their mutual struggle.
We already knew about the court’s three-justice liberal faction, consisting of justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. What’s new is a clear split between the court’s conservatives: the arch-conservative group of justices including Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, and the centrist-conservative group composed of Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.