In the context of law and the judiciary, I would argue the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and party identification often have little or no meaning.
As an extremely significant case in point, I offer the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Blakely v. Washington. A majority of the high court held that the Constitution requires that all facts used by judges in sentencing must either be admitted by a defendent or found by a jury. As a result of this ruling, several hundred thousand federal prisoners may need to be resentenced. Many will likely be released years or even decades earlier than would otherwise have been the case.
Sound like some sort of “liberal” decision? The five justices in the majority were Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg ? and Thomas and Scalia. The majority opinion was by Scalia.
Mark Allenbaugh has an excellent article explaining the decision and its ramifications.
