No, Merrick Garland Is Not to the Left of Elena Kagan

March 18, 2016

A Daily Kos post by Kerry Eleveld (3/17/16) promises “some good news for progressives” concerned about Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Under the headline, “How Far Left Could Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee Push the Supreme Court? Pretty Far,” Eleveld writes:

Here’s some good news for progressives: Scoring from four political scientists suggests that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, DC Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland, would land to the left of six sitting justices, including Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, who are both considered to be part of the court’s liberal cohort. Only the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor score to the left of Garland according to their history of rulings…. So despite disappointment among many progressives with Obama’s pick, if confirmed, Garland could potentially move the court further left than it’s been in half a century or more, reports the New York Times.

But Eleveld appears to have misread the New York Times feature (3/16/16) that places Garland to the left of Kagan and Breyer. The Martin/Quinn scores that are the basis for this ranking are based on how justices voted on Supreme Court rulings*; since Garland is not a Supreme Court justice, he doesn’t have any votes to rank. Instead, as the New York Times (3/16/16) explained, “Judge Garland’s score is based on the score of his appointing president, Bill Clinton.”

http://fair.org/home/no-merrick-garland-is-not-to-the-left-of-elena-kagan/