Charts: The Supreme Court's Rightward Shift

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/supreme-court-roberts-obamacare-charts

If the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, it will undoubtedly cement the Roberts court's reputation as the most conservative in years. That's not an entirely a matter of opinion. Thanks to an amazing trove of data collected by law professors Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn and the Supreme Court Database, the court's rightward trajectory can be confirmed.

By several measures, the court headed by Chief Justice John Roberts is the most conservative since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon named Warren Burger to replace the famously liberal Earl Warren. Not only is its most conservative member (Clarence Thomas) nearly as conservative as the Burger court's most conservative member (future Chief Justice William Rehnquist), its most liberal member (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) is considerably less liberal than previous justices on the left side of the spectrum.



Looking at individual members of the Roberts court also shows a rightward shift in its ranks. Between 2005 and 2010, most of its five conservative-leaning members became more so. Additionally, liberal Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter were replaced by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who may turn out to be less liberal than their predecessors.

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1. What is "median justice"

Is it halfway between right and wrong or what the constitution allows or what one wished it allowed?

What if "median" justice had upheld Jim Crow would that have been considered a good thing?
What about abortion? what if "median justice" kept the status quo, where states could decide for themselves which women were worthy to receive abortions?

The solution is more liberal justicies

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2. As impressive as the charts are...

I'm not sure 'conservativeness' and 'liberalness' have even had consistent definitions over the years.

For example it seems to me that when the democrats were in power (from the great depression until the 1980's). The conservatives were the opposition to the liberals, I'd say now (since there are more frequent shifts in control of congress) progressives are the opposition to conservatives.

Sure, there were republicans controlling the executive branch (since the great depression), but we still had a 91% tax bracket under Eisenhower (and creation of the interstate highway system) and Nixon signed the legislation creating the EPA.

I'd like to see the table that they used to establish conservative versus liberal decisions before I sign on to believing that the trend exists.