As another demonstration that the convenient (but themselves vastly oversimplified) labels of “Left” and “Right” (or “Liberal” and “Conservative”) apply way too sloppily when considering the judiciary (especially the Supreme Court), one of the first things that new “hyper-conservative out-of-the-mainstream” Justice Alito has done has been to rule with “the Left”:
New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court’s conservative wing Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection.
Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri’s last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.
I still have doubts over Justice Alito, as far as some suspected outcomes of his future rulings. But it’s always worth a demonstration (even right off the bat) that predicting how a justice will rule on a case is often a lot more difficult than simply painting them as Red or Blue.