After a slow start, and many opinions that confounded expectations, the Supreme Court closed the term with several decisions that split the justices along ideological lines. Yet overall, the 6-3 Court only decided twelve of fifty-seven cases by that margin, and in only five of those cases was the Court split along ideological lines (the two affirmative action cases, Biden v. Nebraska on student loans, 303 Creative v. Elenis on whether a web designer could be required to make websites celebrating same-sex marraige, and Jones v. Hendrix concerning habeas claims).
Several cases previewed as likely to split the justices along ideological lines produced unanticipated agreement (as in Groff v. DeJoy on religious accommodation in employment, Axon & Cochran on challenges to agency adjudication, Glacier NW on labor disputes, and (to some degree), Sackett v. EPA on the scope of federal regulation under the Clean Water Act), while others did not produce the conservative result we were told to expect (Allen v. Milligan on the Voting Rights Act and Brackeen v. Haaland on the Indian Child Welfare Act), and still others splintered the Court in truly unexpected ways (Mallory v. Norfolk Souther Railway on personal jurisdiction and National Pork Producers Council on the dormant commerce clause).
Over at EmpiricalSCOTUS, Adam Feldman and Jake Truscott have compiled some other statistics for the term. Of note, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was in the majority in 96 percent of the Court's cases, more than any other justice, followed closely by the Chief Justice. Interestingly, the Justice least likely to be in the majority was another conservative: Justice Thomas. The overall ranking on this score, as compiled by Feldman and Truscott, is quite unexpected, as shown below.
