A death row case that divided Kavanaugh and Gorsuch

Supreme Court's conservative rift exposed as 2 right-wing justices clash

Many U.S. Supreme Court rulings of the 2020s are coming down along strict partisan lines, with the six GOP-appointees justices on one side and the three Democratic appointees comprising the dissent. But in Pitchford v. Cain, a 5-4 ruling handed down on May 28, the majority united the three Democratic appointees (Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson) with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while the…

A death row case that divided Kavanaugh and Gorsuch

On the surface, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh share much in common. They are both judicial conservatives, both self-professed originalists, both former federal appellate court judges with respected records, and both were appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the same president. Yet there are certain legal issues that have brought out notable differences between them. The Supreme Court's recent 5–4 decision in Pitchford v. Cain offer…