America’s Supreme Court is less one-sided than liberals feared

IN THE AUTUMN America’s Supreme Court seemed destined for a momentous shift when Republicans rushed to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative judge, to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal jurist who had died in September. In place of a wavering 5-4 conservative tilt that had held for decades, by the end of October the high court had a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees—the most unbalanced array in a century. Yet as the final rulings of Justice Barrett’s first term arrive (including, on June 23rd, a win for students’ speech rights and a loss for union organisers), the dynamics of the newly constituted Supreme Court seem more complex, and less extreme in their results, than many expected.