Results of the VC Reader Poll on Ranking Supreme Court Justices

The results so far are here, based on 1,853 votes. A few thoughts:

1) As you might expect from a right-of-center blog, the right-of-center Justices were more popular than the left-of-center Justices. At the same time, every Justice had his or her fans. For example, in a one-on-one matchup between the most favorite of the readership as a whole and the least favorite of the readership as whole, 31% of voters preferred the latter.

2) Among VC readers, the favorite Justice is Justice Scalia. The favorite left-of-center Justice is Justice Kagan.

3) The most unbalanced match-up was Scalia/Alito: Those who responded favored Justice Scalia 3 to 1.

4) Ideology no doubt played a role in the ranking (see #1), and I would guess that writing ability was also a factor. In my view, the best writers on the Court are Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Kagan. As noted in #2, Justice Scalia was the favorite Justice and Justice Kagan was the most favorite left-of-center Justice; Chief Justice Roberts came in second overall.

5) I like the Condorcet voting software, and I’ll probably use it again for reader polls.

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