In an earlier article I looked at all of the merits decisions since the Supreme Court’s newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined the court four years ago, to see who is its most “ideological” justice. I found a court with clear ideological poles but also a group of justices much closer to the middle. Chief Justice John Roberts was only 3.4% from 50/50 conservative/liberal outcomes – that is, voting for conservative and liberal outcomes in an equal amount of merits cases. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was 2.5% from the center, Justice Brett Kavanaugh 5.1%, and Justice Neil Gorsuch 6.2%. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were considerably farther to the left, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Jackson were considerably farther to the right.
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Those numbers included everything from unanimous decisions to the court’s most contentious cases. But the decisions that tend to define public perceptions of the Supreme Court are the close ones. A 5-4 ruling can determine the scope of a constitutional right. A 6-3 ruling can produce headlines about the court’s conservative supermajority. Looking only at those cases then provides a useful test: does the ideological structure seen across the full merits docket become substantially different when the analysis is restricted to the court’s closest decisions?
The answer is yes – but with an important qualification. The closely divided docket makes almost every justice look more ideological. Much of that change, however, is driven by a particular subset of 6-3 decisions.
Three ways to look at the same court
The analysis uses the same basic measure as the earlier study. Each justice’s votes were coded as producing either a conservative or liberal outcome, following the Supreme Court Database and its coverage of the most recent term. A justice voting conservative 50% of the time has a score of zero. A justice voting conservative 70% of the time is 20 points to the conservative side; a justice voting conservative 30% of the time is 20 points to the liberal side.
This analysis compares three versions of the merits docket.
The first is the full set used in the earlier article. The second includes only merits cases decided by 5-4 or 6-3 votes; that is, the court’s most contentious cases. There are 67 of these: 21 decided 5-4 and 46 decided 6-3. The third removes the pure ideological 6-3 cases. These are cases in which the six Republican-appointed justices all voted in a conservative direction while the three Democratic-appointed justices all voted in a liberal direction. There are 23 such cases – exactly half of the 46 6-3 decisions in the sample and slightly more than one-third of all of the closely divided cases. Removing them leaves 44 merits decisions.
The distinction is important here because two cases can both end 6-3 while conveying very different information about the court. One type produces the lineup now associated most closely with the court’s ideological blocs: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett on one side, and Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson on the other. The other type produces a cross-ideological coalition. In several cases, for example, Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined the three Democratic-appointed justices against Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. Both results are 6-3 decisions. But only one represents a clear division between the court’s Republican and Democratic appointees.
Separating those categories produces one of the clearest results in the data. Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett averaged about 4.3 points from 50/50 across the full merits docket. Restrict the analysis to 5-4 and 6-3 decisions and their average distance rises to 16.8 points. Remove the pure ideological 6-3 cases, however, and their average falls back to approximately 4.0 points.
In other words, for those four justices the closely divided docket initially makes the court’s middle look almost four times as ideological as it does across merits cases generally. Once the straight partisan-appointee 6-3 cases are removed, however, that difference almost entirely disappears. That is, the court acts ideologically in some contentious cases, but not (as is the common narrative) in all contentious cases.
But let’s dig a bit deeper.
Close cases push the justices toward the poles
Across all merits cases in the earlier analysis, the average justice sat about 10.5% from an even 50/50 conservative-liberal voting record. Among only the 5-4 and 6-3 cases, that average distance rises to 26.8%.
The change occurs across nearly the entire court. Alito, for example, was 15.5 points to the conservative side across all merits cases. Among the closely divided cases, he is 41.0 points to the conservative side. Thomas moves from 12.1 points conservative to 30.6. In other words, in closely divided cases, Alito is the most conservative justice. Thomas follows.
The same thing happens in the other direction. Sotomayor moves from 17.5 points to the liberal side across the full merits docket to 36.6 points among the 5-4 and 6-3 cases. In such cases, Sotomayor is therefore less liberal than Alito is conservative, but just barely. Kagan moves from 15.7 points liberal to 36.6 as well. Jackson moves from 16.3 to 29.1.
But the effect is not confined to the court’s ideological poles. Kavanaugh goes from only 5.1 points to the conservative side across all merits cases to 21.6 points in the closely divided cases. Roberts moves from 3.4 to 17.2. Gorsuch goes from 6.2 to 15.7, while Barrett moves from 2.5 to 12.7.
Thus, in the most closely divided (i.e., contentious) merits cases, the court breaks down as follows, from the most ideological to the least ideological justice: Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Thomas, Jackson, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Gorsuch, Barrett.
Overall, there is nothing especially mysterious about part of this result. Selecting cases because they were decided 5-4 or 6-3 deliberately removes the many decisions in which most or all of the justices agreed. It leaves behind the cases in which disagreement was strongest.
Those 23 decisions are only about one-third of the 67 closely divided cases in the analysis. But their effect on the ideological scores is substantial.
Across all nine justices, the average absolute distance from a 50/50 record is 26.8 points when every 5-4 and 6-3 case is included. Remove the pure ideological 6-3 cases and that falls to 16.7 points, a reduction of roughly 38%.
The decline is not evenly distributed. Roberts changes the most. His 67 closely divided votes initially divide 45 conservative to 22 liberal, putting him 17.2 points to the conservative side. Once the 23 pure ideological 6-3 cases are removed, his remaining votes divide 22 to 22. In other words, in close cases decided among non-ideological blocs, his voting is right down the middle.
Kavanaugh moves from 21.6 points conservative to 6.8 points conservative. Gorsuch goes from 15.7 points conservative to 2.3 points on the liberal side. Barrett moves from 12.7 points conservative to 6.8 points liberal.
Those last two results are not evidence that Gorsuch or Barrett are liberal justices. They show something narrower: among closely divided cases that do not produce the standard 6-3 ideological lineup, their conservative- and liberal-coded votes are sufficiently balanced that both wind up slightly on the liberal side of the 50/50 line. That is, in such cases, they vote more often than not with the court’s liberal bloc.
To sum it all up, the court’s center-right quartet looks nearly four times as far from an evenly divided voting record when all closely divided cases are examined. But virtually that entire difference disappears once the straight ideological 6-3 cases are taken out.
As for the rest of the court, Alito, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson averaged approximately 15.4 points from 50/50 across all merits cases. Among all 5-4 and 6-3 cases, their average rises to about 34.8 points. Removing the pure 6-3 decisions reduces it, but only to about 26.8 points.
Alito remains particularly ideological. His score falls from 41.0 points on the conservative side among all close cases to 36.4 after the pure 6-3s are removed. Sotomayor and Kagan each fall from 36.6 points liberal to 29.5. Thomas falls from 30.6 conservative to 20.5, while Jackson moves from 29.1 liberal to 18.2.
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Thus, removing the conventional 6-3 decisions changes both sides of the court. But it does not change them equally.
For Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, the resulting ideological distances closely resemble what we saw across the full merits docket. For the other five justices, the closely divided cases continue to produce much stronger directional voting even after the obvious ideological 6-3 decisions disappear.
That distinction sharpens one of the findings from the earlier analysis. The first article described Roberts, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh as substantially closer to the middle than Thomas and Alito, while the three Democratic appointees were farther to the liberal side. The close-case analysis suggests that this pattern was not simply being produced by unanimous and lopsided decisions.
The remaining cases are not random noise
Removing the pure ideological 6-3 cases does not leave a collection of unpredictable one-off coalitions. Some alternative alignments recur often enough to help explain why the ideological scores move.
The most common is particularly striking. In 10 of the 44 remaining cases, the same six justices wind up on the prevailing ideological side: Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch are on the other side. In other words, Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett repeatedly separate from Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch in closely divided cases, and the three Democratic appointees frequently wind up on their side.
The 2023 case of Moore v. Harper is a clear example. The case involved the argument, supported by then former President Donald Trump and his allies, that the elections clause gives state legislatures authority over federal-election rules largely free from restrictions imposed by state constitutions and state courts. Roberts wrote the 6-3 opinion rejecting that broad theory, joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson. Thomas dissented with Gorsuch and, in part, Alito.
That is hardly a low-salience case in which ideology would be expected to disappear. It concerned federal elections, partisan gerrymandering, and a constitutional theory with potentially significant consequences for state control over election rules. Yet the division was not six Republican appointees against three Democratic appointees.
The same point emerges even more sharply from 2023’s Allen v. Milligan. There, Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the three Democratic appointees in affirming a lower-court ruling that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Roberts wrote that the court was applying its existing Section 2 precedents rather than accepting Alabama’s proposed changes to the governing framework. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett dissented in whole or substantial part.
Allen is useful for this analysis because it was a 5-4, rather than a 6-3, decision. It shows that the pattern is not simply a quirk of how the 6-3 cases were classified. In one of the court’s most politically salient voting-rights disputes of the period, Roberts and Kavanaugh supplied the votes necessary for a liberal-oriented outcome.
Other cases scramble the conventional alignment even more. In Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, decided in 2024, the court held 5-4 that the Bankruptcy Code did not authorize a Chapter 11 plan to extinguish claims against the Sackler family without the consent of affected claimants. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, joined by Thomas, Alito, Barrett – and Jackson. Kavanaugh dissented, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
That lineup is difficult to describe using ordinary partisan shorthand. Four Republican appointees and Jackson formed the majority. Two other Republican appointees joined Sotomayor and Kagan in dissent. The data considers the prevailing result to be liberal, but the more useful point for present purposes is that the case divided the justices along something other than their appointing party.
The same phenomenon remained visible the following term. In 2025’s FCC v. Consumers’ Research, the court rejected a constitutional nondelegation challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s universal-service funding system. Kagan wrote for Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson; Gorsuch dissented with Thomas and Alito.
Those examples put substance behind the averages. Roberts does not reach a 22-22 record in the non-pure cases because his votes are scattered randomly between two categories. He repeatedly participates in identifiable cross-ideological coalitions. The same is true, to different degrees, of Kavanaugh and Barrett.
Gorsuch is more complicated. He moves even farther statistically – from 15.7 points conservative among all closely divided cases to 2.3 points liberal after the pure 6-3s are removed – but he often gets there through different coalitions. His voting pattern is less closely tied to the Roberts-Kavanaugh-Barrett grouping. That fits the original merits analysis, which noted that Gorsuch’s frequent alignment with the Democratic-appointed justices could make his voting look less conservative than conventional descriptions of his jurisprudence might suggest.
The bottom line: a conservative court … but not simply that
My original article described a conservative court with poles on both sides and a center-right group of Republican appointees considerably closer to a balanced ideological voting record. The close-case analysis reinforces that description but also helps explain where it comes from.
If all 5-4 and 6-3 cases are placed together, the distinction nearly disappears. Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch move sharply away from the middle, and the court begins to look much more like two opposing ideological camps.
Separate out the 23 decisions in which the six Republican appointees vote together against the three Democratic appointees, however, and the earlier structure returns almost exactly. The average distance of Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch falls from 16.8 points to 4.0 – slightly below their 4.3-point average across all merits cases.
That is not what happens to the other five justices. Alito, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson remain, on average, 26.8 points from 50/50 even after the pure ideological decisions are removed. Their close-case voting records thus remain considerably more ideological than their records across the merits docket as a whole.
The resulting picture is therefore not one in which ideology disappears. Thomas and Alito remain strong conservative poles. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson remain strong liberal ones. Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett participate both in the court’s conventional conservative majority and in a recurring set of cross-ideological majorities. Gorsuch follows a less conventional path but likewise becomes far less ideological once the straight 6-3 cases are removed.
The bottom line? A 3-3-2-1 court may be a more apt way to describe things than by pure vote count alone.
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