This paper examines how the United States Supreme Court’s decisions involving three salient areas of social policy have shaped and been shaped by a closely divided, deeply polarized partisan political regime. Utilizing content analysis of party platforms and confirmation hearings from 1968 through 2016 we argue that the Court’s decisions involving the Second Amendment, culminating in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), exemplify a Court implementing the constitutional values of a resurgent New Right Republican Party during this period. The Court’s role in developing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, culminating in United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), on the other hand, exemplifies how values of the post-1968 Democratic Party elites have implanted themselves on the Court. Finally, the Court’s decisions involving abortion, beginning with Roe v. Wade (1973) and running through Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole (2016), offer a different case study. The Court’s abortion decisions actually entrenched certain political values from an earlier New Deal political regime at a period when that regime was declining. Subsequently, the Court decisions in this area have not only been deeply divided but served as cleavage for polarizing the political parties.
