stated.. not in this timeline. maybe when Ruth was alive, when there is more balance. that's why his advisors told him it was a bad play. IN THIS TIMELINE.
further on this here...
en.wikipedia.org
Partisan balance[edit]
The simplest way to approximate the ideological leanings of Supreme Court justices is by the political party of the president who appointed them. In a 2000 paper, Segal, Timpone, and Howard found that, in their study area (civil liberties and economics cases from 1937 to 1994), presidents appear to be reasonably successful in extending their policy preferences by appointing like-minded justices to the court, though they found that justices appear to deviate over time away from the presidents who appointed them.
[4] In 1999, Pinello conducted a meta-analysis of 84 studies of American courts covering 222,789 cases adjudicated since World War II and found that political party affiliation was a dependable indicator of rulings: Democratic judges voted in favor of liberal solutions more often than Republican judges did, especially in federal courts (the U.S. Supreme Court,
U.S. Courts of Appeal, and
U.S. District Courts).
[5]
The graph below (using data from
List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States) shows the number of justices sitting in the Supreme Court who were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents since 1936. In 1936, the Court had 7 justices appointed by Republican presidents and 2 appointed by Democratic presidents. Democratic President
Franklin D. Roosevelt then filled the Supreme Court with 9 appointees in the late 1930s and 40s (including promoting Chief Justice
Harlan F. Stone, who had originally been appointed to the Court by Republican President
Calvin Coolidge. Then Democratic President
Harry S. Truman appointed 4 justices. In the 1950s, Republican President
Dwight D. Eisenhower reversed the balance by appointing 5 justices to the court.
In the 1960s, Democratic Presidents
John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed 2 justices each, flipping the balance back to a majority of Democratic-appointed justices. This was reversed by Republican President
Richard Nixon who appointed 4 justices, followed by Republican Presidents
Gerald Ford,
Ronald Reagan, and
George H.W. Bush appointing a total of 7 more justices. (Democratic President
Jimmy Carter was not able to appoint any justices in his single term). In succession, Democratic President
Bill Clinton, Republican President
George W. Bush, and then Democratic President
Barack Obama each appointed 2 justices. Since 2020, with the appointment of 3 justices by Republican President
Donald Trump, the Court has 6 justices appointed by Republican presidents. Democratic President
Joe Biden has appointed 1 justice, but that appointment did not change the partisan balance. In every term since 1970, the Court majority (consisting of at least 5 of the justices) has been appointed by Republican presidents. Every chief justice since 1953 has also been appointed by Republican presidents.
Devins and Baum point out that before 2010, the Court never had clear ideological blocs that fell perfectly along party lines. In choosing their appointments, Presidents often focused more on friendship and political connections than on ideology. Republican presidents sometimes appointed liberals and Democratic presidents sometimes appointed conservatives. As a result, "... between 1790 and early 2010 there were only two decisions that the
Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court designated as important and that had at least two dissenting votes in which the Justices divided along party lines, about one-half of one percent."
[6]: 316
[7] Even in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, Democratic and Republican elites tended to agree on some major issues, especially concerning civil rights and civil liberties—and so did the justices. But since 1991, ideology has been much more important in choosing justices—all Republican appointees have been committed conservatives and all Democratic appointees have been liberals.
[6]: 331–344 As the more moderate Republican justices retired, the court has become more partisan. The Court is now divided sharply along partisan lines with justices appointed by Republican presidents taking increasingly conservative positions and those appointed by Democrats taking moderate liberal positions.
[6]: 357
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