Supreme Court justices are so often cast as combatants in headlines (and, sometimes, in editorials) that it is easy to forget just how compatible they are over the course of a year. For example, in the term that ended last July, most justices voted with most other justices most of the time.
There are exceptions. The most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, voted with the most liberal, John Paul Stevens, 40 percent of the time, according to the annual statistical review of the term just published in the Harvard Law Review. Justice Thomas voted with six justices at least half the time. He slipped into the 40s only with Justices Stevens, Harry Blackmun and David Souter.
Justice Stevens also parted company with three colleagues more than half the time. (They were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Thomas.) But Justices Thomas and Stevens were alone in their aloofness. Seven of the nine justices voted with at least six or seven of their colleagues most of the time.
Three of those justices voted with all eight of their colleagues most of the time. They were the two women, the veteran Sandra Day O'Connor, and first-termer Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy is increasingly the indicative and decisive member of this court. According to the Harvard statisticians, Justice Kennedy was on the winning side in 12 of 13 decisions with a 5-4 split. No other justice came close to that. Nor did any justice dissent as few times as did Justice Kennedy: four. Every other member of the court was a double-digit dissenter.
Continuing a trend of recent years, there were very few dissents last term. Just 135. That is 40 fewer than the previous term,
which was 27 fewer than the term before that, which was approximately 100 fewer dissents than were routine a decade ago. If it weren't for some of the blistering and sometimes personal language justices direct at each other in their opinions of the court, concurrences and dissents, we would look at the statistics and think of this court as one trying to bring about a new era of good feelings and harmony.