Five years after Neil Gorsuch was confirmed, and in the second term with Amy Coney Barrett, the Republican-appointed majority asserted itself.

The statistics bear this out (my thanks to SCOTUSblog for producing its annual StatPack, a veritable treasure trove for Court-watchers). Of the term’s 60 opinions in argued cases—a historically low number—14 involved a 6-3 “partisan” split, to which can be added ten 5-4 decisions, in all of which the three liberal justices stuck together. So 40% of cases were “ideological”—including the big ones on school choice, religion, guns, vaccine mandates, environmental regulation, and, of course, abortion—and only 25% (15 cases) were unanimous. These are striking numbers—the former quite high, the latter low—and very different from any year since I became a court-watcher.

Moreover, when you look at those 5-4 cases, it wasn’t a simple story about the cagey chief justice. Indeed, in all three 5-4 splits resulting in a conservative win, it was Gorsuch who joined the liberals. And in the seven liberal results, every conservative except Alito moved over, with Roberts and Kavanaugh doing so four times.

What all of that numerology shows is that having a “margin of error” matters.