It is interesting, although not too surprising, that most left-leaning posters tend to consider Sotomayor the best Justice, and right-leaning posters tend to consider her the worst Justice. Conversely, right-leaning posters rank Thomas relatively highly, but left-leaning posters tend to rank him at the very bottom.
I think it's far more interesting seeing more widespread agreement in ranking Alito quite low. I have some suspicions as to the reasonings. Thomas is actually pretty good on the Fourth Amendment, at least in terms of what constitutes a search. Look at a case like Kyllo v. United States.
Personally, I was undecided between Sotomayor and Kagan for my top spot, but I'm a huge fan of Sotomayor's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
I'm not convinced Alito has any actual judicial philosophy beyond being a partisan hack. This often puts him on the side of sound interpretation, but not always, and it's a very bad approach to take.
That's the thing, yes. Alito and Sotomayor are the two most shamelessly motivated and knee-jerk legal "reasoners" on the Court, but whereas Sotomayor can at least be argued to be motivated by bleeding-heart moral imperatives rather than pure my-team-ism, Alito comes across as a GOP party man plain and simple.
I think it's fair to say that for the "average" or "median" voter, these two are the worst members of their respective ideological wings.
