SCOTUS justices — especially Republican nominees — get more liberal as they age

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Analysis of Supreme Court justices' voting habits from FiveThirtyEight finds that the older a SCOTUS judge becomes, the further to the left his or her voting record will drift:

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This is especially the case for justices nominated by Republican presidents: While Democratic nominees become more liberal as well, the transformation is more significant for GOP picks. The trend holds true for the current justices, though in his short tenure, Justice Samuel Alito has actually moved slightly to the right.

As for why this happens, FiveThirtyEight posits no less than seven theories, the most convincing of which may be research that suggests (contrary to popular wisdom) that it's fairly common for people to become less strictly conservative with age.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.