How Conservative Is Amy Coney Barrett?
The newest justice, measured: the closest of the nine to the Court’s center, the least likely to leave her bloc, and never once alone.
Conservative, and closer to the Court’s center than anyone on it — 0.058 Martin–Quinn units from the median, nearer than Kavanaugh or the Chief Justice. But the center in her case does not mean the swing: she leaves the conservative bloc less often than any of them, 9 times in 112 chances (8.0%), and she has never in her career been the lone justice in dissent — the only member of this Court who can still say that. What is distinctive is not how often she goes but what she does when she gets there. In 7 of her 9 departures she wrote the opinion herself.
The record, against every justice since 1946
The Supreme Court Database codes each vote liberal or conservative, issue by issue, under definitions explained here. Barrett’s share is 40.1% liberal across 282 coded votes since 2020, against 47.6% for the colleagues who heard the same cases — a gap of 7.5 points, the narrowest gap of the six Republican appointees. Five terms is a short record: she sits well under the 500-vote bar the site’s career rankings require, so no rank is printed for her. Over the 2020 through 2024 terms her 40.1% is third-lowest on the bench, above only Thomas and Alito — a fact that sits oddly beside her being the closest to the median, and the two together are the whole shape of her: a reliable conservative vote who is nonetheless nearest the middle of a Court whose middle has moved.
By subject the record is conservative and unremarkable — 38.3% liberal in criminal procedure against a 51.5% baseline, 36.5% in civil rights against 49.6% — with one exception that turns out to matter. In economic activity she runs 40.0% against a 40.8% baseline: level with her colleagues, in the one area where most of her breaks happen.
Where she sits on the current Court
Agreement in divided cases, the 2020 through 2024 terms — how often each colleague was on Barrett’s side of the judgment when the Court split:
Her chart is Kavanaugh’s with the peak filed down: the same shallow slope, the same unusually high floor. She tops out at 83.6% with Kavanaugh rather than in the nineties, and bottoms out at 41.5% with Sotomayor — the second-highest floor on any of these pages, behind only his. She agrees with Kagan in 50.9% of divided cases, which is to say more often than not: only she and Kavanaugh cross fifty percent with a justice from the other bloc.
When she breaks from the bloc
Same test as the other conservative pages: a divided case in which at least four of the other five Republican appointees voted together and Barrett voted the other way. It is the rarest departure among them — 9 times in 112 such cases across the 2020 through 2024 terms, 8.0%, under Kagan’s 10.1% and a quarter of Gorsuch’s 30.4%. 6 were dissents and 3 were majorities; the database codes 7 of the 9 liberal and 2 conservative.
The striking number is the other one. In 7 of her 9 breaks she did not merely vote the other way — she wrote the opinion: six dissents, one majority. No other justice profiled here authors that share of their own departures. When Barrett leaves the bloc she leaves an explanation behind her.
The agency cases
5 of the 9 are economic-activity cases, and three of those are environmental — the cluster that gives the page its subject. She wrote the dissent in HollyFrontier, with Sotomayor and Kagan, on the plain meaning of extending an exemption a refinery no longer held. She wrote the dissent in Ohio v. EPA, joined by all three liberals, when the Court stayed the Good Neighbor ozone rule on an emergency application: the applicants had not met the standard, and the objection they were pressing had never been raised with specificity in the rulemaking. And in San Francisco v. EPA she wrote again for the same four, on the Clean Water Act’s permit conditions: “There is no getting around it: The receiving water limitations are ‘limitations.’” Three agency cases, three opinions, the same three colleagues each time.
The text, wherever it goes
The rest are statutory readings that happen to land where they land. In Fischer she wrote for herself, Sotomayor and Kagan against the Chief Justice’s narrowing of the January 6 obstruction statute — with Jackson on the other side, the cleanest demonstration on this site that the bloc labels do not predict a statutory case: “statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway.” In Bittner she read the Bank Secrecy Act to penalize per account rather than per report; in Counterman, with Thomas, she would have kept an objective test for true threats. And in Medical Marijuana v. Horn she wrote the majority — with Gorsuch and the three liberals — holding that a civil RICO plaintiff is not barred because a personal injury produced the business loss.
It is a small pile of cases to build a reputation on, and the outside measures disagree about what it means. One analyst puts her closest to the median and then argues she is not the swing justice at all — one cross-ideological majority to the Chief Justice’s twelve, and a handful of issue-specific dissents. Another counts her swing votes well behind Roberts’s and Kavanaugh’s. The votes here fit that reading: not a justice in the middle, but a conservative justice with a short list of subjects on which she goes her own way and writes it out.
Never alone
Across 295 recorded votes — 26 of them dissents — Barrett has never once been the only justice in the minority. Kagan matched her at zero for fifteen years and then broke the streak in 2026, which leaves Barrett as the only member of this Court who has never dissented alone. Thomas has done it 52 times, Sotomayor 18.
That is not timidity; the six authored dissents above are not timid. It is a preference for company that goes with the rest of the record — the highest floor but one, the fifty-percent agreement with Kagan, the caution she named in her confirmation testimony when she said courts “are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life.” Her scholarship before the Court asked the harder version of the same question, whether an originalist judge is bound by a precedent she believes wrong, and answered that a justice’s duty runs to the Constitution. On the bench so far, the duty has mostly run through the text of statutes.
The 9 breaks, case by case
Every case from the 2020 through 2024 terms in which at least four of the other five Republican appointees voted together and Barrett did not, oldest first.
Wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan: a refinery cannot have “extended” an exemption it no longer holds — to extend something is to prolong what exists, not revive what lapsed.
Joined Kagan’s majority (with Thomas, Breyer and Sotomayor): a patient is “entitled to” Medicare benefits if they qualify, whether or not Medicare paid the bill.
Joined Gorsuch’s majority (with the three liberals): the Restoration Act bars only the games Texas prohibits outright, so the Pueblo may offer what Texas merely regulates.
Wrote the dissent, joined by Thomas, Sotomayor and Kagan: the statute imposes a duty for each foreign account, so a non-willful failure to report is a separate violation per account.
Wrote the dissent, joined by Thomas: true threats, like nearly every other unprotected category, should be identified by an objective reasonable-listener test.
Wrote the dissent, joined by all three liberals, on an emergency application: the applicants had not met the demanding standard for a stay, and the objection they pressed was never raised with specificity during the rulemaking.
Wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, against the majority narrowing the January 6 obstruction statute: “statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway.” Jackson was in the majority.
Wrote the majority herself, with Gorsuch and the three liberals: a civil RICO plaintiff is not barred from suing for business or property loss merely because a personal injury produced it.
Wrote separately, dissenting in part, joined by all three liberals: “There is no getting around it: The receiving water limitations are ‘limitations.’”
Questions
Is Amy Coney Barrett a swing vote?
She is the justice measured closest to the Court's center — 0.058 Martin–Quinn units from the median, nearer than Kavanaugh (0.088) or the Chief Justice (0.131) — and also the least likely of the six Republican appointees to leave them: 9 departures in 112 chances, 8.0%. Both things are true, and the analyst who produced the first figure argues against the swing-justice label for exactly that reason: her crossings are few and issue-specific rather than a standing position in the middle.
Has Amy Coney Barrett ever dissented alone?
No — not once. Through the 2024 term she has never been the only justice in the minority, and after Kagan filed her first solo dissent in 2026 Barrett became the only member of the current Court still at zero. Thomas has done it 52 times.
When does Barrett break with the conservative justices?
Overwhelmingly in statutory and regulatory cases: 5 of her 9 breaks are economic-activity cases in the database's scheme, and three are environmental — the small-refinery exemptions in HollyFrontier, the Good Neighbor ozone rule in Ohio v. EPA, and the Clean Water Act permits in San Francisco v. EPA. In each she read the statute to leave the agency more room than her colleagues would.
Did Barrett dissent in the January 6 obstruction case?
Yes. In Fischer v. United States she wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, against the Chief Justice's majority narrowing the obstruction statute — while Jackson joined that majority. It is the sharpest illustration on this site of how little the bloc labels predict a statutory case: “statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway.”
What is Amy Coney Barrett's judicial philosophy?
Originalist, in the sense she gave at her confirmation: she interprets the Constitution’s text “to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it,” and “that meaning doesn’t change over time.” Her academic work took the harder question seriously — whether an originalist judge is bound by precedent she believes wrong — and concluded that a justice's duty runs to the Constitution rather than to a decision clearly in conflict with it. She has written a book about the job since: Listening to the Law (2025).
How this page is made
Every count comes from the Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.), justice-centered, 2025 Release 01 (how the voting figures are made). Window, bloc and break definition are as on the other conservative pages, and every case links to its opinion. One of the nine, Ohio v. EPA, came to the Court on emergency applications rather than after argument; the database records it like any other divided decision, and so does this page, but it is worth knowing which kind of case it was.
Outside figures: the Martin–Quinn distances are Adam Feldman’s (Legalytics, 2026), as is the argument against reading her as a swing justice (SCOTUSblog, 2026); the count of her swing votes behind Roberts’s and Kavanaugh’s is Jonathan Adler’s. The solo-dissent standing is from Feldman’s June 2026 tally, which is also where Kagan’s first solo dissent appears — the database behind the tables here ends with the 2024 term. Quotations: her 2020 confirmation testimony; her dissents in Fischer and San Francisco v. EPA. Her published view of precedent is from Originalism and Stare Decisis, 92 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1921 (2017), and Precedent and Jurisprudential Disagreement, 91 Tex. L. Rev. 1711 (2013). Case notes were checked against the slip opinions at supremecourt.gov.