Judge Roberts Conservative so Far

Because Chief Justice Roberts has recently sided with conservatives on a couple different cases this month, this has led to speculation on how Roberts will shape the future direction of the Supreme Court. Generally, if someone's siding with Scalia and Thomas, that means he's more a constitutionalist, whereas if someone is siding with Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer or Stevens that means they're more of an interpreter of the law.

It still might be too early to tell definitively, but Roberts looks like a conservative. If this turns out to be true, and Alito as well, it looks like the court would have 4 conservatives, 4 liberals and one swing vote, whereas before it had 3 conservatives, 4 liberals, and 2 swing votes. So net net, it's a little better but not enough to significantly change much.

When you think about it, liberals have to be pretty happy with the composition of the court. Over the last 36 years, they've only controlled the executive office for 12 (and 8 of those were solely because we had a third party candidate), yet they've held at least half of the sway on the supreme court. Hopefully it's time for this to change.