Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

A few days ago the US Supreme Court refused to take an appeal from a 9th Circuit case that took a constitutional stand for homeless people. The 9th Circuit sad that it is cruel and unusual punishment for the city of Boise, pursuant to authority from the State of Idaho, to criminalize sleeping in outdoor public places such as parks and sidewalks.  SCOTUS refused to take that up. What are we to make of this? I offer the following thought.  This is yet another piece of evidence that the deliberations of SCOTUS are not what the ideologues always make them out to be. Ideologues of left and right count heads -- five appointed by Presidents of Party left, 4 appointed by members of Party right. Ah, the decisions will naturally be leftward, as ideologues understand it. Or, if the count comes out the other way, so will the results.  Even most ideologues will sometimes admit that there are lots of issues before the court that don't offer themselves neatly as left-versus-...

What else may be said about the Supreme Court term newly concluded? From the two Big Ones near the end and from the wailing that has followed them, some might infer that we now have a "liberal" court (meaning one that is at least somewhat to the left of the center of the US political spectrum, whatever exactly that in turn means). But that would be a superficial reading. This is after all almost the same configuration of justices that decided CITIZENS UNITED (2010). [Though Kagan has arrived and Stevens has departed since then.] Looking at the three cases with which I began this discussion, last Saturday, it isn't obvious what chalk marks one would make on a left/right score board anyway. The energy-policy preemption case was a federal-state matter. Phrases such as "state's rights" are more part of the lexicon of the right than of the left. But in this case, it was Scalia who wrote the dissent, and who thus took the broader view of federal responsibilit...