Justice Antonin Scalia defended the Supreme Court from charges the court has become “politicized” in an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler:
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Look, some people in recent months have criticized the court as being a politicized court because all the Republican appointees vote one way and all the Democratic appointees vote the other way. That didn’t use to be the case when John Paul Stevens and David Souter—both Republican appointees—were on the court. They usually voted with the so-called liberal wing of the court. So you couldn’t divide it up politically as neatly as you could now, but now you probably can. But it really enrages me to hear people refer to it as a politicized court. Neither I, nor any one of my colleagues, votes a certain way because he or she likes this president or is a member of the party that that president belongs to. I couldn’t care less who the president is. They vote that way because that’s who they are. They were selected because of who they are.
So why should it be surprising, that when you have a Democratic Party that has been trying for years to appoint people who approve of Roe v. Wade—which means people who are not originalists, who do not stick to the text, who believe in substantive due process or whatever—why should it be surprising that when the Democrats have been doing that for 30 years at least, and the Republicans have been doing the opposite for 30 years, swearing that they’re going to appoint people who are not judicial activists, hew to the text, why should it be surprising? That you end up with a court where the Democratic appointees are quite different from the Republican appointees, I mean, you know, maybe the legislature and the president are not as stupid as you think.
But they assuredly pick those people because of who they are, and when they get to the court they remain who they were.