The New York Post reports on the apparent meeting of the minds between Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The Supreme Court’s two newest justices have yet to disagree in a single case decided this term. The two have also shown a remarkable degree of agreement in their reasoning, fully joining the same opinions in over 90 percent of the cases in which they both participated. No other pair of justices have shown an equivalent degree of unanimity thus far this term. (For term statistics through the end of May, see this SCOTUSBlog StatPack.)
Until this morning, Justice Kagan had yet to disagree in the judgment with Justice Breyer either, though she and Justice Breyer did not always join the same opinions. (Justices Breyer and Sotomayor had disagreed on the judgment in cases in which Kagan was recused.) That string of agreement was broken with this morning’s decision in Board of Trustees of Stanford v. Roche Molecular Systems, in which Kagan joined the seven-justice majority and Justices Breyer and Ginsburg dissented.