A Surprising Snapshot of the Supreme Court

[groovedaddy]

Among common impressions of the current Supreme Court are that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are joined at the hip and that the majority tilts reflexively in favor of corporations and employers.

As the court heads into the current term’s final three months, I looked at the statistics. What I found surprised me:
• In decisions that have split the court in any direction, Justices Scalia and Thomas have voted on opposite sides more often than they voted together. They differed in all three of the non-unanimous criminal-law cases that the court has decided so far.

.• Employees suing companies for civil rights violations have won all three cases decided so far, two of them by votes of 8-0 (with Justice Elena Kagan recused).

.• By wide margins, the court has rejected arguments put forward by corporate defendants in several cases. It refused to permit corporations to claim a personal-privacy exemption from disclosure of law-enforcement records under the Freedom of Information Act. It permitted a liability suit to proceed against an automobile manufacturer for not installing the safest kind of back-seat passenger restraint. And in a unanimous opinion on Tuesday, the court refused to throw out a lawsuit by investors alleging that a drug manufacturer’s failure to disclose reports that some patients using its cold remedy had lost their sense of smell amounted to securities fraud.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/a-surprising-snapshot/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

[elleng]

1. Greenhouse

Interesting. Thanks

[JDPriestly]

2. Thanks. I was pleased by the decision on corporate privacy. Good decision.