An Extraordinary Winning Streak for Religion at the Supreme Court
Adam Liptak of The New York Times reports that a new study finds the Supreme Court has sided with religion far more often in recent years. He writes, “The study, to be published in The Supreme Court Review, documented a 35-percentage-point increase in the rate of rulings in favor of religion in orally argued cases, culminating in an 81 percent success rate in the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.” The rise in religious wins has, nonetheless, been accompanied by a stark partisan divide in free exercise jurisprudence. Zalman Rothschild, a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, said, “The politicization of religious freedom has infiltrated every level of the federal judiciary.”