The same Supreme Court that progressive critics keep calling a partisan rubber stamp ruled unanimously or near-unanimously in roughly 62% of its cases last term, a record that dismantles the left's favorite argument for packing the bench.
Law professor and author Jonathan Turley laid out the numbers in a New York Post column, and they tell a story that the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board and the court-packing lobby would rather you not see. The Court issued fully unanimous opinions in more than 44% of its cases last term, slightly up from the year before. Another 11% were decided 8-1. Roughly 6% came down 7-1 or 7-2. Add those together and you reach approximately 62% of cases decided with no meaningful dissent.
More than 77% of the Court's opinions showed no ideological split at all. The left's narrative, that six conservative justices march in lockstep against three liberal ones, applies to fewer than one in four cases. The actual numbers expose a Court that agrees far more often than it divides.
The cross-ideological agreement runs deeper than the top-line figures suggest. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Court's newest liberal member, landed in the majority in 72% of cases last term. She agreed with Justice Samuel Alito, a reliable conservative, 49% of the time and with Justice Clarence Thomas 50% of the time.
Those numbers do not describe a Court riven by partisan warfare. They describe justices reading statutes, weighing precedent, and reaching shared conclusions in case after case, exactly the way the institution was designed to work.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, were described as regularly "in play" across a variety of cases, creating mixed majorities that defy the clean left-right split critics prefer to advertise.
If the justices were operating as a partisan bloc, the Trump administration had a strange way of benefiting. The Court ruled against the administration on birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, tariffs, Federal Reserve Board members, and even Trump's personal defamation case. Just days before Turley's column, the Court rejected mail-in voting restrictions ahead of the midterms, a decision President Trump himself called "a big loss for Republicans."
Trump publicly criticized Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh over the mail-in ballot ruling. Three justices he appointed, ruling against his administration's position. That is not the behavior of a captured court.
Yet the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board still insisted:
"The Supreme Court's conservative majority keeps choosing ideology over impartiality."
Choosing ideology over impartiality, while handing the sitting president loss after loss. The editorial ran in July. The mail-in ballot defeat came in September. The Inquirer's framing did not age well, but the calls to restructure the Court kept coming anyway.
Critics also lean on the claim that the Court has lost public legitimacy. A Marquette Law School poll put the Court at 47% favorable against 53% unfavorable. That is not a glowing number. But context matters.
Congress hit 86% unfavorability this year. A Gallup survey found that just 10% of Americans hold a favorable view of Congress. The presidency sits at roughly 40% approval. Against those benchmarks, the Supreme Court holds the highest approval rating of any of the three branches of the federal government.
Turley framed the gap bluntly:
"The move to pack the court is based on a long-standing radical agenda to change the constitutional system on the left."
The push to add seats or eliminate the Court entirely does not track public dissatisfaction. It tracks ideological frustration. When the Court rules the way progressives want, on mail-in ballots, say, the decision vanishes from the outrage cycle. When it rules the other way, the institution itself becomes the problem.
The upcoming term is shaping up as another major docket. Cases involving gun rights, parental rights, immigration, and climate change are on the horizon. Each one will create new rounds of commentary about an "illegitimate" Court, commentary that will likely ignore the 62% unanimity rate and the cross-ideological agreement that defined last term.
Turley argued that the nation's 250th anniversary should prompt a different response:
"On our 250th anniversary, we should celebrate, not demonize, our highest court."
He also offered a broader conclusion about the institution's track record:
"This court continues to function as designed as a principled, independent institution."
That assessment will not satisfy critics whose real objection is not how the Court operates but what it sometimes decides. The numbers from last term, the unanimity rate, the cross-ideological voting, the losses dealt to the administration that appointed three of the justices, point to a Court doing its job. The pack-the-court movement does not want a fairer bench. It wants a friendlier one.
When 62% agreement is not enough to prove independence, the complaint was never really about bias.
