Court Rejects $79.5 Million Tobacco Ruling Check out how the votes lined up: "Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, joined with Breyer.
Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas. Ginsburg said Tuesday's ruling made punitive damages law even more confusing."
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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5 comments:
That IS weird. Just goes to show that the idea of the simple conservative/liberal split does not always hold. Though Breyer's area of expertise is the economic stuff, so that helps to make this make a bit more sense. Nonetheless, the Scalia-Ginsburg-Stevens-Thomas bedfellows is the biggest mindblow. If you were to ask me for the unlikeliest breakdown of a 5-4 decision this pretty much would have had to have been it.
dcat
Makes you want to search past decisions to see if they have ever lined up like that before...almost.
It also makes you wonder if they just get together and flip coins.
"Ok, Ruth...a HEAD means you vote yes....."
Steve -- you hit it right: it ALMOST makes you want to do that. But not really, thoguh I'd like it if someone else did that work.
Chet -- Roberts really, really, really tries to forge consensus, but obviously that won't always happen.
dcat
Judges who are assumed to be of a particular political persuasion still disagree because cases and the issues involved in them are too particular to be seen through a purely political lens.
Knowing nothing about the case, however, I would just keep in mind that Scalia (and Thomas, too some degree) can tend to come across as more libertarian than your typical conservative, unless the "culture" has spoken on an issue - which he shows way too much deference to IMO, and Breyer's big-role-for-government sympathies are something that most conservatives aren't conservative enough to reject anyway. But in this case it was probably moreso some technical, decontextualized quirk in the laws and precedents that Breyer was responding to, as he also tends to do. He seems to love exceptions from his legal philosophy for their own sake.
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