What I said in a second post. There are only a few "reliable" conservative justices. Thomas is rock solid in his jurisprudence. Alito is solid. Gorusch has some idiosyncracies, but he's pretty solid. Scalia was just about as perfect a justice as I could ask for.

Roberts? Kavanaugh? Barrett? Well..

Kenndy and O'Connor used to be known as a swing justices, who could, and often were, swayed by counter arguments.

A really solid, intellectual, and persuasive leftwing justice could easily make a habit of picking off Roberts, convincing Kavanaugh to go along with something, etc. We've seen this happen. Kagan DOES try this with Roberts.

Kagan's probably is that she's got to represent the intellectual left, while tempering two justices who are not intellectual and who are not interested in meeting with the other side of the bench.

Sotomayor and Ketanji are shitty justices. They're also not going to convince anyone who is balancing on the edge of an issue. This is one case where, imho, it's better to have firebrand idiots.

What I said in a second post. There are only a few "reliable" conservative justices. Thomas is rock solid in his jurisprudence. Alito is solid. Gorusch has some idiosyncracies, but he's pretty solid. Scalia was just about as perfect a justice as I could ask for.

Roberts? Kavanaugh? Barrett? Well..

Kenndy and O'Connor used to be known as a swing justices, who could, and often were, swayed by counter arguments.

A really solid, intellectual, and persuasive leftwing justice could easily make a happen of picking off Roberts, convincing Kavanaugh to go along with something, etc. We've seen this happen. Kagan tries this with Roberts.

Kagan's probably is that she's got to represent the intellectual left, while tempering two justices who are not intellectual and who are not interested in meeting with the other side of the bench.

Sotomayor and Ketanji are shitty justices. They're also not going to convince anyone who is balancing on the edge of an issue. This is one case where, imho, it's better to have firebrand idiots.