How Liberal Is Elena Kagan?
The left’s tactician, measured: every vote since 2010, the highest reach across the aisle of any liberal, and the 15 times she left her bloc — never once alone.
Solidly — her career record ranks 8th most liberal of the 33 justices rankable since 1946, one place behind Sotomayor — but she is the flexible edge of the bloc, not its anchor. Alone among the liberals she votes with the Chief Justice, Kavanaugh and Barrett in a majority of divided cases; her 15 breaks in the 2020 through 2024 terms sent her into a conservative-anchored majority 11 times, five of them in the 2024 term alone; and in the fifteen terms this database covers she never once dissented alone — zero solo dissents, a distinction only Barrett shares.
The record, against every justice since 1946
The Supreme Court Database codes each vote liberal or conservative, issue by issue, under definitions explained here. Kagan’s career share is 61.9% liberal across 973 coded votes since 2010 — 14.5 points above the colleagues who sat on the same cases — ranking her 8th of the 33 justices since 1946, directly behind Sotomayor in the table. But over the 2020 through 2024 terms the three liberals separate: Sotomayor 68.0%, Jackson 67.6%, Kagan 65.3% — and her dissent rate, 17.8% against a 16.7% same-case baseline, is nearly her colleagues’ own, where Sotomayor’s and Jackson’s run points above.
The subjects tell the same story in miniature: strongly liberal where rights are at stake — 73.4% in civil rights against a 49.2% baseline, 63.8% in criminal procedure against 44.2% — and close to the Court’s center on economic and structural cases, where most of her aisle-crossing happens.
Where she sits on the current Court
Agreement in divided cases, the 2020 through 2024 terms — how often each colleague was on Kagan’s side of the judgment when the Court split:
No other page shows a middle like hers. The liberals first — 86.4% with Sotomayor, 85.0% with Breyer, 78.9% with Jackson — but then, where every other profiled justice falls off a cliff, Kagan steps down: 54.2% with the Chief Justice, 52.0% with Kavanaugh, 50.9% with Barrett — majorities of divided cases with three Republican appointees. Jackson clears half with only the Chief Justice, barely; Sotomayor with none. The cliff arrives late for Kagan, and lands on the same pair as everyone’s: 27.3% with Alito, just under Thomas.
When she leaves Sotomayor and Jackson
Same test as the other liberal pages: a divided case in which both of her seatmates — Sotomayor with Breyer through 2021, Sotomayor with Jackson since — voted together and Kagan voted the other way. It happened 15 times in 149 such cases across the 2020 through 2024 terms — 10.1%, between Sotomayor’s 6.3% and Jackson’s 13.1% — but the shape is like no one else’s. 11 of the 15 put her inside the majority, 4 were dissents in cross-ideological company, and not one left her alone.
The direction coding — 10 conservative, 5 liberal — carries the usual caveats (the database calls her Diamond Alternative Energy vote liberal under its pro-standing convention, though the suit it let proceed was fuel producers’ against a clean-air waiver). The plainer fact is the company: in the 2024 term alone she joined the full conservative majority five times — fees, Medicare, the ADA, FDA venue, standing — while Sotomayor and Jackson dissented.
Into the majority, with the text
Most of her breaks are statutory-interpretation cases where she read the text with the majority and against her seatmates — and in the clearest one she held the pen herself. In Pulsifer she wrote the opinion holding the sentencing safety valve’s “and” works as a checklist of separate disqualifiers, over a Gorsuch dissent joined by Sotomayor and Jackson. In Hansen she joined Barrett reading “encourages or induces” narrowly enough to survive the First Amendment; in Gallardo, Thomas on Medicaid liens; in George, Barrett on veterans’ collateral review; and in the 2024 term, the five in a row. It is the record of the justice who told a Harvard audience in 2015, “I think we’re all textualists now” — and who, when she believed the method was being bent, wrote in West Virginia v. EPA: “It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it.”
The cross-ideological dissents
When her breaks are dissents, the company is never the usual. In Warhol she wrote against Sotomayor’s majority — the Court’s two senior liberals, opinion against opinion, in the term’s sharpest internal exchange — joined only by the Chief Justice, warning the ruling “will stifle creativity of every sort” and “will make our world poorer.” In Mallory and PennEast she joined Barrett’s dissents on personal jurisdiction and state sovereign immunity; in the Chehalis case, Gorsuch’s, on the meaning of “Indian tribes.” Four dissents, four different coalitions — and never once, in the fifteen terms this database covers, a dissent alone.
Never alone
The starkest number on this page is zero. Across 1,004 recorded votes since 2010 — 178 of them dissents — Kagan was never once the lone justice in the minority. Thomas has done it 52 times, Sotomayor 18, Alito 12; of the nine sitting justices only Barrett joins her at zero, on ten fewer terms. Her dissents travel in company or not at all, and the company is chosen: Roberts in Warhol, Barrett in Mallory, Gorsuch in Chehalis.
Two honest footnotes. First, the streak ended just past this database’s edge: in May 2026 — outside the window these figures cover — she filed her first-ever solo dissent, in Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean, nearly sixteen years after taking her seat. Second, the pattern is not softness: in the 2024 term she was in the majority in 83% of the Court’s cases, the most of the three liberals — the profile of a justice who would rather shape a majority, or discipline one from inside a coalition, than write for herself.
The 15 breaks, case by case
Every case from the 2020 through 2024 terms in which both of her seatmates voted together and Kagan did not, oldest first.
Joined Barrett’s first majority opinion: draft biological opinions are predecisional and deliberative, so FOIA’s privilege shields them.
Concurred in the judgment: Seila Law controls as precedent — though she had dissented from it — and shareholders get relief only for harm the removal restriction actually caused.
Joined Gorsuch’s dissent (with Thomas): Alaska Native corporations lack government-to-government recognition, so they are not “Indian tribes” under the statute.
Joined Barrett’s dissent (with Thomas and Gorsuch): Congress cannot hand a private pipeline company the power to haul a nonconsenting state into condemnation proceedings.
Joined Thomas’s majority: the Medicaid Act lets a state recover from settlement money allocated to future care, not only past care.
Joined Barrett’s majority: a regulation later invalidated is a change in the law, not “clear and unmistakable error” reopening a final benefits denial.
Wrote the dissent, joined only by the Chief Justice, against Sotomayor’s majority — the Court’s two senior liberals opinion against opinion: the ruling “will stifle creativity of every sort” and “will make our world poorer.”
Joined Barrett’s dissent (with Roberts and Kavanaugh): a registration form that says nothing about jurisdiction cannot manufacture “consent” to be sued on anything, anywhere.
Joined Barrett’s majority: “encourages or induces” reaches only solicitation and facilitation of specific unlawful acts, so the statute survives the First Amendment challenge.
Wrote the majority herself — over a Gorsuch dissent joined by Sotomayor and Jackson — reading the safety valve’s “and” as a checklist of three separate disqualifiers.
Joined the Chief Justice’s majority: a preliminary injunction alone does not make a “prevailing party” entitled to attorney’s fees.
Joined Barrett’s majority on the Medicare fraction: “entitled to” SSI benefits means eligible for a cash payment in the month of hospitalization.
Joined Gorsuch’s majority: the ADA’s employment title does not reach a retiree who neither holds nor seeks a job when the alleged discrimination occurs.
Joined Barrett’s majority: retailers blocked from selling a vaping product are “adversely affected” and may choose their venue for review.
Joined Kavanaugh’s majority: fuel producers have standing to challenge California’s emissions waiver. Sotomayor and Jackson each dissented separately.
Questions
Is Elena Kagan liberal or moderate?
Liberal, by any long ruler: her career record ranks 8th most liberal of the 33 justices rankable since 1946, directly behind Sotomayor. But she is the most moderate of the three sitting liberals — the lowest same-window liberal share (65.3% to Sotomayor's 68.0%), and the only one who votes with any Republican appointee in a majority of divided cases: 54.2% with the Chief Justice, 52.0% with Kavanaugh, 50.9% with Barrett.
How often does Kagan vote with Sotomayor and Jackson?
In divided cases across the 2020 through 2024 terms, with Sotomayor 86.4% of the time and with Jackson 78.9% — a wider spread than the other liberal pairings, and the gap has an edge to it: in the 2024 term Kagan joined the full conservative majority five times against a Sotomayor–Jackson minority.
Does Kagan ever vote with the conservative justices?
More than any other liberal justice. Of her 15 breaks from a united liberal front in the 2020 through 2024 terms, 11 put her inside a conservative-anchored majority — including Pulsifer, where she wrote the opinion over a dissent by Gorsuch, Sotomayor and Jackson — and her four break dissents were all in cross-ideological company (Barrett's in Mallory and PennEast, Gorsuch's in the Chehalis case, her own, with the Chief Justice, in Warhol).
Has Kagan ever dissented alone?
Not once in the fifteen terms this database covers — zero career cases as the lone justice in the minority through the 2024 term, a distinction she shares only with Barrett. The streak ended outside this page's data window: in May 2026 she filed her first-ever solo dissent, in Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean, nearly sixteen years after taking her seat.
What is Elena Kagan's judicial philosophy?
She named it herself, twice. In 2015: “I think we’re all textualists now.” In her 2022 West Virginia v. EPA dissent: “It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it.” Between those two sentences is her whole method — statutory craft taken seriously enough to cross the aisle when the text points there (Pulsifer, Hansen), and to indict the majority when she believes it abandons its own rules.
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), which runs through the 2024 term — which is why the May 2026 Havana Docks solo dissent is reported as a footnote rather than in the tables. Window, seatmate rule and caveats are as on the other liberal pages; the Diamond direction coding is flagged above. Case notes were checked against the slip opinions at supremecourt.gov. Outside figures: her 2024-term majority rate from SCOTUSblog’s “Does Justice Kagan stand alone?” (July 2025). Quotations: the 2015 Scalia Lecture at Harvard Law School; her dissents in West Virginia v. EPA and Warhol.