The Media Gets it Wrong Again: So What Else is New?

Within the past 50 years the U.S. Supreme Court Justices have agreed with each other more than 75% of the time and in certain decades more than 80% of the time Justices vote 9-0 on cases before them. Looking at the current Court configuration since Justice Sotomayor was confirmed and sat down on 10/10/09 there have been 38 cases brought before the Court and only ONCE have the Justices voted along Conservative-Liberal ideological lines.

Presidents have no idea of what they are really getting when they nominate who they think will be a conservative or liberal as President Obama must be realizing right about now with Sotomayor voting with Chief Justice Roberts on numerous occasions, and in one case wrote an concurring opinion with him. Another example of a Justice nomination that didn't quite go as planned was Ronald Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor - who turned out to vote very liberally on numerous issues but still fell within the 75% 9-0 unanimous decisions of the past 50 years.

The media has portrayed the Justices as an 'us-against-them' mentality when it just isn't there. Just as the Ginsberg and Scalia families who have been best friends for decades.