A number of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the final weeks of the 2019-2020 session were disappointing to Republicans. In several cases, justices appointed by Republican presidents departed from originalist interpretative principles preferred by most (though not all) Republicans and did so with arguably serious consequences. But the one justice who has consistently striven to hew close to originalist principles — both in the just-concluded session and during his twenty-nine-year tenure on the Court — is Justice Clarence Thomas.
The New York Times was pleased with the unexpected outcome of the season. It wrote, “In an era of stark partisan polarization, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. steered the Supreme Court toward the middle, doling out victories to both left and right in the most consequential term in recent memory.” “The trend is clear,” it quoted Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. “He [Roberts] is drifting left at a statistically significant rate — and at a rate roughly resembling Souter’s liberal turn in the 1990s.”
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