A 2022 analysis of the Supreme Court found that the court reached a conservative ideological peak in 1988. During the 1988 Supreme Court term, Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy presided over the bench. The court was at its most liberal in 1963.
Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021
*Indicates a term in which a justice resigned and their replacement was confirmed and seated during a term. This happened in the 1937 term (Stanley Forman Reed replaced George Sutherland), 1938 term (William O. Douglas replaced Louis Brandeis), 1956 term (Charles Evans Whittaker replaced Stanley Forman Reed), and the 2005 term (Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor).
Martin-Quinn scores, or MQ scores, are dynamic metrics used to gauge the ideology of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice based on their voting record. A jurist's score will continuously change as each judicial decision they make creates a new data point to be input into the model. MQ scores theoretically have no minimum or maximum values, but scores generally fall between -5 and 5. A negative number indicates a tendency towards liberalism, while a positive score indicates a tendency towards conservatism.
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Martin-Quinn Scores. (October 17, 2022). Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021 [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved December 21, 2024, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/
Martin-Quinn Scores. "Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021." Chart. October 17, 2022. Statista. Accessed December 21, 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/
Martin-Quinn Scores. (2022). Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021. Statista. Statista Inc.. Accessed: December 21, 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/
Martin-Quinn Scores. "Ideological Scores of The Supreme Court of The United States from 1937 to 2021." Statista, Statista Inc., 17 Oct 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/
Martin-Quinn Scores, Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021 Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/ (last visited December 21, 2024)
Ideological scores of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 2021 [Graph], Martin-Quinn Scores, October 17, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323005/ideological-score-supreme-court-us/
