Ruling
The highest court in the land has been busy.
The United States Supreme Court handed down a number of major rulings over the past week, rejecting the role of affirmative action in college admissions, striking down Biden’s plan to cancel ~$400bn worth of student debt, and ruling that a web designer can refuse to work for same-sex wedding clients in Colorado.
Whenever the Supreme Court makes an important ruling there is obviously a reaction online. But, although the recent rulings have grabbed headlines, online reaction has so far been only a fraction of what was recorded last summer, when the court struck down Roe V. Wade. That ruling caused an immediate spike in traffic to information on the court itself, with visitors to the Wikipedia page for the Supreme Court spiking sharply and the Roe v. Wade page itself being the most read on all of English-language Wikipedia for 5 days straight.
The rise of the 6-3 court
When Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court, the makeup of the 9 person court shifted, solidifying a 6-3 conservative majority that has become a motif of the court's decisions ever since. Indeed, independent analysis finds that 6-3 became the most common alignment in the court's previous term, with the most recent major decisions following a similar voting pattern.
