Madison   The Supreme Court ended its term at the end of June, so we can stop holding our breath, but we can hardly celebrate. The Martin-Quinn scores are named after a professors at the University of Michigan and University of California at Berkeley and attempt to use the Justices voting patterns to determine ideology. They claim that the recent term showed an ongoing pattern of the Roberts Court towards the left. Perhaps we’ve become so desperate for good news that we’re now willing to grasp at any straws?

This so-called drift does not include the decisions in the widely heralded Texas abortion case where the court by a 5-3 decision threw out the specious decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Texas legislatures transparent attempt to roll boulders in the way of women attempting to gain an abortion in that state using the veneer of adding additional health safety requirements. The court saw through that attempt, now widely copied by many other states. In a simple fact-based decision, they noted that there was no proof that the additional health standards were about protecting women and noted that many other procedures that were much more dangerous did not have to meet these burdensome hospital privilege and surgical operating room standards. There was no poetry in the decision, just the facts, ma’am. Roberts and Alito dissented on procedural grounds without contesting the facts, further locking the door on these conservative efforts to control women. Was this a liberal-left decision or simply the majority crying “gotcha” at such obvious overreaching?

The Court also drew a finer line around what accounts for corruption from political figures versus a wink-and-nod, all part of the game exchange at the favor bank of political commerce by vacating a conviction of the former governor of Virginia. He and his wife had taken a boatload of gifts from a contractor, but at the time there was no law in Virginia forbidding it, no matter how unseemly. The Court in an opinion written by the Chief Justice said, essentially, let the good times roll, if someone has money and power, that’s the point of politics and they can ask and receive favors and assistance without it being a bribe as long as the politician didn’t directly interfere with the governmental process in offering such help. Is this a liberal-left decision or just a free pass for the one-percenters to get-and-grab at politics along the Trump transactional model while someone down the line can get life in prison for five-fingering a bag of candy?

Meanwhile we have the split decisions without a full Court like the one that left union-shop dues provisions alive on one hand and re-criminalized more than four million immigrants on the other. Those were cases of dodging a bullet and taking one on pretty fierce ideological lines. No movement there. Four-on-four hard-court, no fouls game on the biggest court we have. And, how about the erosion of Fourth Amendment rights on search and seizure by police which ignores everything we are learning in modern society about an institution well-armed and out of control. Yikes!

Speculation about the current nominee-in-waiting, Judge Merrick Garland, puts him as slightly left of Justice Stephen Breyer and right of Justice Elena Kagan. Hardly a move to open the envelope wider or go out of the box. None of this seems like a move towards real justice, but just more middle-of-the-road, keep the peace and let the establishment rest easy. It seems clear we have less the rule of law and equal justice and just more pure politics covered in a black robe.