Partisan Politics at the Supreme Court

The conservative-majority court has not been the disaster Democrats feared. There have been a bunch of different coalitions, sometimes involving conservative and liberal justices on the same side. Sometimes, it seems, the personal philosophies of the justices do matter. Chief Justice John Roberts, it seems to me, has done a decent job of keeping things focused on the legal matters at hand and not letting partisan ideology take over.

EXCEPT when it comes to issues that bear directly on which party holds power in Congress or the White House. When it's Bush vs. Gore or the recent case on gerrymandering, all of the justices reliably vote the interests of their own party. When a decision would throw the White House or either house of Congress to the other party, everything else goes out the window.