Laura, how are things going in Austria?

They're good. They're really good.

Although I do miss the Hot Girl Summer in New York.

How do you say Hot Girl Summer in German? Is it Hot Forland Summer?

Maybe Heismation Summer. It sort of depends on whether the Hot is referring to the Summer or the Girl.

Both. But it has to be both.

The Heismation Summer.

We'll take it.

Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drick.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court wrapped up its term, issuing opinions in two cases related to election law.

Both decisions split the court along ideological lines, six to three, with conservatives in the majority.

The opinion in Burn of It versus the Democratic National Committee ruled that Arizona laws invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and barring collection of ballots by most third parties did not violate the Voting Rights Act.

And the opinion in Americans for prosperity versus Bonta ruled that a California law requiring non-profits to disclose their major donors is a violation of the First Amendment.

That wraps up the first term of a six three conservative majority and Justice Amy Coney Barrett's first term on the bench.

Prior to Thursday's decisions, analysts had largely seen the court as avoiding a hard right turn, with more unanimous decisions and idiosyncratic splits than expected.

Today, we're going to take a look at what the data can tell us about the ideological direction of the court and will dig into some of the specifics of the term's major cases, particularly on election law.

So first, we're going to talk to five thirty eight contributor Laura Bronner and then later ABC contributor and law professor Kate Shaw will join us. Laura, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Great to have you. So what data do we rely on to get a sort of quantitative picture of the ideological direction of the Supreme Court?

So there's a bunch of data, mostly the way that justices decided each of these cases.

The most commonly used are the Martin Quinn scores, which scale these justices on one dimension, which is generally considered the left right dimension.

You can also look at how often each justice agreed with each other justice.

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