Six of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices are considered conservative, giving the right side of the bench a 6-3 majority. That is the current answer to how many conservatives are on the Supreme Court, and it is the strongest conservative majority the Court has held in decades. The three remaining justices, all appointed by Democratic presidents, make up the liberal wing.
The Six Conservative Justices
Chief Justice John Roberts has led the Court since September 29, 2005, after being nominated by President George W. Bush.1U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 109th Congress – 1st Session He is the senior conservative and, as discussed below, the one most likely to break from the bloc in a close case.
Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving current justice. He took his seat on October 23, 1991, after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush.2Supreme Court of the United States. Current Members At 77, he is also one of the Court’s most ideologically consistent members.
Samuel Alito joined the Court on January 31, 2006, also a George W. Bush nominee.3The White House Archives. Judicial Nominations – Justice Samuel A. Alito He wrote the majority opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade.
The three remaining conservatives were all appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term. Neil Gorsuch was confirmed on April 7, 2017, filling the seat left open for over a year after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.4U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 115th Congress – 1st Session Brett Kavanaugh followed on October 6, 2018, after a contentious confirmation process.5U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 115th Congress – 2nd Session Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, cementing the current 6-3 majority.6U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 116th Congress – 2nd Session
The Three Liberal Justices
Sonia Sotomayor joined the Court in 2009 as a President Barack Obama nominee, becoming the first Hispanic justice.7United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court – Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan followed in 2010, also an Obama appointee, replacing the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.8Congress.gov. PN1768 – Nomination of Elena Kagan for The Supreme Court of the United States Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed in 2022 after being nominated by President Joe Biden, is the most recent addition and the first Black woman to sit on the Court.9Congress.gov. Nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court of the United States
Three seats out of nine cannot form a majority on their own. The liberal justices’ influence comes largely through dissents and through cases where at least one conservative crosses over.
How Often the Six Actually Vote Together
The 6-3 label is real, but it can mislead. The conservative bloc is not a single voting unit, and how often the six move together depends on the type of case.
Roberts is the conservative most likely to join the liberals when he sees institutional credibility or a careful reading of a statute at stake. He sided with the liberals and two other conservatives to let the Biden administration proceed in immigration cases, and he wrote the 2026 majority opinion that blocked much of President Trump’s trade agenda.
Gorsuch, often labeled deeply conservative on structural constitutional questions, crosses over at a surprisingly high rate in cases involving criminal procedure and individual rights. Kavanaugh and Barrett have each joined liberal-majority outcomes in select cases. Thomas and Alito almost never break from the conservative position in closely divided rulings.
The result is a Court whose effective majority shifts with the legal question. On abortion, gun rights, and limits on federal agencies, all six conservatives have voted together. On emergency powers, some criminal justice questions, and statutory disputes, the coalitions scramble. In February 2026, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett joined the three liberal justices to strike down most of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in a 6-3 decision, with Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh in dissent.10Supreme Court of the United States. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump
What Makes a Justice Conservative
What puts a justice in the conservative column has less to do with party politics than with interpretive method. The six generally share a commitment to originalism and textualism. Originalism reads the Constitution according to the meaning its words carried when adopted. Textualism applies a similar lens to statutes, focusing on the words Congress wrote rather than on what legislators may have hoped to accomplish.
The three liberal justices tend toward a more flexible approach, often called living constitutionalism, which reads broad constitutional principles in light of evolving societal values. The two camps clash over how much weight historical practice should receive and whether courts or legislatures should drive legal change.
What the 6-3 Court Has Done
Three rulings show the scope of the majority’s impact.
Dobbs and Abortion
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), five conservative justices — Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — voted to overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years.11Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Roberts concurred in upholding Mississippi’s 15-week ban but would not have gone as far as overruling Roe. The three liberals dissented. More than 20 states moved to ban or heavily restrict abortion in the aftermath.
Loper Bright and Agency Power
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), all six conservatives voted to overrule the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which had allowed federal agencies to interpret ambiguous language in the statutes they administer.12Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Courts must now decide for themselves what a statute means. The ruling touches nearly every corner of federal regulation, and lower courts have been striking down challenged agency rules at markedly higher rates since it came down.
Bruen and Gun Rights
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Court struck down New York’s requirement that concealed-carry applicants show a special need. The majority held that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a Second Amendment right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, and that any gun regulation must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.13Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen Several states rewrote their permitting laws, and lower courts are still working out how to apply the new historical-tradition test.
Whether the 6-3 Split Could Shift
All nine justices hold lifetime appointments and can serve until they retire, die, or are removed through impeachment. As of mid-2026, no conservative justice has announced a retirement, though speculation continues about whether Thomas or Alito might step down while a Republican president could name their replacements.
The size of the Court is set by statute, not the Constitution. Federal law currently provides that the Court “shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum.”14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1 – Number of Justices The number has been nine since 1869, after earlier changes that brought the total as low as five and as high as ten.15Supreme Court of the United States. The Court as an Institution Congress could change that number by statute, but no expansion proposal has gained serious traction since President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. Confirmation of any new justice requires a simple majority vote in the Senate.16United States Senate. Supreme Court Nominations 1789-Present For now, the 6-3 count stands, and a single vacancy is what it would take to move it.