Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts is shifting the court’s decisions to the right, according to an analysis piece by The New York Times reviewing the court’s now-finished season. Roberts was able to wrangle more conservative rulings, the piece argues, because he found an ally in swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted with the chief justice 86 percent of the time. That’s important, according to the Times, because Kennedy is “the most powerful jurist in America.” Kennedy wrote the opinion for the most recent ruling on behalf of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn.

He joined the liberals 5 times and the conservatives 11. That was a significant shift to the right: in the previous term, Justice Kennedy voted four times each with the liberals and the conservatives in cases divided along the traditional ideological fault line.

The potential addition of Sonia Sotomayor will probably not affect this shift.

The arrival of a neophyte justice coupled with Chief Justice Roberts’s increasing mastery of the judicial machinery foreshadow a widening gap between the Democratic-led political branches and the Supreme Court. Indeed, the court appears poised to move to the right in the Obama era.

Interesting judicial politics!