The 5-4 Vote

[Harpuia]

It seems in almost every moral issue, votes by the Supreme Court are always 5-4 in one way or the other. This is strange to me.

It's like half/half, and laws are only enforced/destroyed when the right party is in place. Whatever happened to the 7-2 vote, the 8-1 vote, or the 9-0 vote? 6-3 votes in and of itself are even rare these days...

I speak these because it seems these days that morality/ethics only boils down to the vote of a single guy in a black cape...

Recent Example: http://www.washblade.com/2006/7-27/news/localnews/ban.cfm

After a 16-month delay, the Washington State Supreme Court this week upheld the state’s ban on gay marriage in a 5-4 vote, leaving intact the Defense of Marriage Act and delivering yet another court-inflicted blow to the gay marriage movement.

Other Examples: http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/homepage/article_1212186.php

First, understand that this 5-3 decision is actually a 5-4 one. One justice, Chief Justice John Roberts, recused himself because, as an appellate judge, Roberts previously ruled on the case on the administration's side. And two justices, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are 86 and 73 years old, respectively. If Bush appoints one, and possibly two, "conservative" justices, cases like this could end up 5-4 in Bush's favor. So this was quite a close call.

The very same reporter, back in December 2000, writing for the same newspaper, covering the same topic – the Supreme Court – wrote about Bush v. Gore, and its 5-4 ruling.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=21620

Neas said that the shift on the Court was partially masked by a number of unanimous decisions that took a narrow approach to the issues raised in some cases. But he said the shift to the right expected when Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor on the Court was reflected in several 5-4 decisions:
a 5-4 majority ruled that the First Amendment does not protect government employee whistleblowers
the same 5-4 majority decided that the exclusionary rule should not apply to violations of the constitutional requirement that police “knock and announce” searches, with Justice Kennedy alone making clear that the decision would not apply more broadly
the same 5-4 majority limited the scope of the Clean Water Act, with Roberts and Alito joining Scalia and Thomas in arguing for a dramatic cutback in this important environmental law but Kennedy providing the decisive voice for a more restrained approach
in a Texas redistricting case, the Court upheld most of Tom DeLay’s nakedly partisan redistricting plan. The same 5-4 majority rejected a challenge by African American voters to the redrawing of a Dallas-area congressional district, but Kennedy joined the more moderate Justices to rule that carving Hispanic voters out of another district to diminish their influence had violated the Voting Rights Act.

 

[Blackguard_]

I speak these because it seems these days that morality/ethics only boils down to the vote of a single guy in a black cape...

Batman's a swing-vote Justice?

ANd it probably has to do with the judges themselves, i.e. liberal vs. conservative appointees. It might be todays SC is more ideologically divided than previous ones?

 

[outlaw]

It seems in almost every moral issue, votes by the Supreme Court are always 5-4 in one way or the other. This is strange to me.

Loving vs Virginia was a unanimous decision

 

[ElvisFan42]

Regardless of what is happening today, SC Judges are supposed to vote based on their interpretation of the constitution they were hired to uphold, not their own morals.

The anti-gay rhetoric is wrong as this is exactly what happened in Massachusetts. The pro-same-sex union groups went and asked where same-sex unions were outlawed by the state constitution. Guess what, they weren't, thus would be allowed. They aren't mentioned at all, which is why the Mass SC said the question of amending the state's constitution is wide open.

Perhaps you should be asking why judges are voting their morals and not simply upholding what the constitution says. If that's what they did, I don't see a problem with a 5-4 vote, and you would probably see very few of those.