The Myth Of A Divided Court-Party Alignment,Vote Split In The U.S. Supreme Court And Justices’ Senate Confirmation Votes Revisited

This paper explores the issue of the U.S. Supreme Court’s politicization. There is a prevailing perceptions among the mass media, general public and scholars that the Supreme Court has been "increasingly politicized" in recent years, which do damage to the Court’s impartiality and independency. This opinion largely comes from two observations:first, political ideology and party affliation tend are significant factors in the procedures of Supreme Court Justices’ selection, nomination and confirmation. Presidents are inclined to nominate candidates who share his ideology, and Senators casting votes to confirm or reject a nomination with similar considerations. Second, Supreme Court Justices are divided as the "conservative" and the "liberal" bloc, casting their votes in accordance with their party alignment. Decisions made by five-to-four vote split are commonly seen in political salient cases.This paper intends to refute such point of view. Although previous scholars have devoted much energy to attempting to explain the "political court", they have largely followed the Attitudinal Approach and ignored the unanimous decisions. Contrary to the prevalent impressions and previous research literature suggest, this paper finds that political ideology is not the most significant factor in Supreme Court decision makings and Justice candidates confirmations, and such characteristic largely remained unchanged during the past two decades. Therefore, it is highly questionable to claim that the Court has been increasingly politicized.