SC Justices defend speech they like, cons more than libs

[lpetrich]

Conservative Justices Far More Biased on Free Speech » Dispatches from the Culture Wars

There’s a fascinating new study by Lee Epstein of the USC Law School that looks at how justices voted on free speech cases from 1953 to 2010. It shows that all justices are more likely to uphold the legality of speech that agrees with them ideologically, the conservatives on the court are far more likely than the liberals to do so.

That's in Lee Epstein : Research: Summary, Full Paper, Data (Stata), Data (Excel)

Probabilities:
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]-[/td][td]Lib Sp[/td][td]Con Sp[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Lib J[/td][td]0.90[/td][td]0.58[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Con J[/td][td]0.15[/td][td]0.47[/td][/tr]
[/table]
So liberal Justices are more likely to support freedom of speech overall than conservative ones, though their biases to their ideologies are similar in size. This means that liberal Justices are much more likely to protect conservative speech than conservative Justices liberal speech.

Numbers for the more recent Justices (%):
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]Who[/td][td]Lib Sp[/td][td]Con Sp[/td][td]# Votes[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Thomas[/td][td]23.1*[/td][td]65.4[/td][td]104[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Scalia[/td][td]20.7*[/td][td]65.2[/td][td]161[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Alito[/td][td]9.1*[/td][td]53.9[/td][td]24[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Roberts[/td][td]15.4*[/td][td]64.3[/td][td]27[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Kennedy[/td][td]43.2*[/td][td]67.7[/td][td]143[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]O’Connor[/td][td]30.6*[/td][td]50.7[/td][td]190[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Breyer[/td][td]40.0[/td][td]38.1[/td][td]87[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Souter[/td][td]60.3[/td][td]51.1[/td][td]103[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Ginsburg[/td][td]53.2[/td][td]40.0[/td][td]92[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Stevens[/td][td]62.8*[/td][td]46.9[/td][td]260[/td][/tr]
[/table]
* means significant at probability <= 0.05

Kagan and Sotomayor were omitted because they had not ruled on enough cases to give good numbers.