Study: Judge Roberts' Votes Trend Toward the Right
Feature Story by Civilrights.org staff - 9/13/2005
John Roberts is more conservative than the average federal appeals court judge, according to a new analysis of the decisions in which Roberts participated as a member of the D.C. Circuit.
In particular, Judge Roberts was most conservative in criminal justice, civil liberties, and civil rights cases.
The study, titled "How Right is He? A Quantitative Analysis of the Ideology of Judge John G. Roberts," also concludes that Judge Roberts was "approximately 30% more likely than the average appellate court judge to hand down a conservative decision."
Kenneth Manning, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, analyzed 190 published and unpublished cases, the sum total of the cases in which Roberts participated, noting the ideological bent (liberal or conservative) of Roberts' vote in each case. Forty-five cases that did not reveal a clear liberal/conservative outcome, or could not be identified as a criminal justice, civil rights and liberties, or economic activity/labor regulation case, were excluded from the analysis.
Manning used as a benchmark the average of U.S. courts of appeals decision-making in the three major case type categories, relying on data archived at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.
Judges' votes in favor of a criminal defendant; upholding individual civil liberties protection; in favor of those alleging violations of civil rights; and in support of a labor union or government regulator were coded as "liberal." Decisions supporting the state and/or prosecutors in criminal cases; allowing the government greater control in civil liberties cases; against civil rights plaintiffs; and in favor of business or industry were coded "conservative."
The study reports that Roberts cast a conservative vote in 67.1 percent of cases, as compared to the conservatism rate of 58.9 percent for all judges on the U.S. courts of appeal.
In criminal justice cases, Judge Roberts voted against criminal defendants 86.4 percent of the time, as compared to an average appellate rate of 79.2 percent.
In civil rights and civil liberties cases (according to Manning, a relatively small sample given the D.C. Circuit's case load during the relevant time period), Judge Roberts cast a conservative vote in 84.6 percent of cases, as compared to an average appellate rate of 58.8 percent.
In cases addressing government regulation and labor issues, Judge Roberts cast a conservative vote in 44.3 percent of the time, as compared to an appellate court average of 48.3 percent.
