Getting the Roberts Court Right: A Response to Chemerinsky

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky makes a substantial contribution to the narrative of conservative ascendance [within the Roberts Court] in The Roberts Court at Age Three. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito “have been everything that conservatives could have dreamed of and liberals could have feared,” he writes. The two newest justices are forging “a solid conservative voting majority" on the Court. The result is a Court that is “notably more conservative” than its predecessors on most contentious questions. It is, Dean Chemerinsky claims, “the most conservative Court since the mid-1930s.” To say Dean Chemerinsky overstates his case is an understatement. Even assuming one can offer a definitive assessment of the Roberts Court’s first three years, there is little support for the claim it is the “most conservative” in seven decades, however “conservative” is defined. The most we can say at this point is that the Roberts Court appears moderately more conservative than its immediate predecessors, but remains under construction. This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.