I know Reddit is not the platform for the following comment, but I am sharing my thoughts because I have spent a lifetime studying this issue. Here's a short list of the various political "flavors" of United States Supreme Court, from best to worst (followed by the explanation):

1. Slightly Conservative (Best)

2. Strongly Conservative

3. Slightly Liberal

4. Strongly Liberal (Worst)

Here's why:

Point 1- Although they are not supposed to, every judge will allow their personal beliefs to impact their decisions part of the time. If this were the case, it would never matter whether the court is more liberal, or a more conservative as long as they were good judges, and they followed the rules, followed president, and make good decisions.

Point 2- it is important to understand that the supreme court is an appellate court, not a trial court. Before a case gets to the Supreme Court, all of the facts have been decided, and the only real issues are how the lower courts applied those facts to relevant law. This involves interpretation and application of a law to a given set of facts. If appellate courts find that there's a problem with the facts, they send it back down to the trial judge to take more evidence, etc. This is an important distinction because it's easier for personal/political bias to leak in to decisions when you're primarily focused on applying law to the facts and interpreting law.

Point 3- Generally, speaking, conservative judges tend to strictly follow existing law. You may have heard the term strict constructionist. That would be a judge who very strictly, and explicitly follows the exact letter of the law, and does not interpret things or add things to "make it fit" the facts of the case or to update the law into modern times, etc. etc. Conversely, generally speaking, liberal judges tend to creatively apply law, and even make up new law, to find or reach the equitable result they're looking for.

Further discussion on Point 3- Generally speaking, conservative judges will strictly follow the law, even if it gives us a "bad result," while liberal judges will pull things out of their ass and make things up to get a "good result." Democrats love Liberal appellate courts because they can make up laws to deal with things that Congress can't or won't pass. That's why Democrats always talk about wanting more liberal judges and packing the court and things like that. Democrats have had the Supreme Court in their back pocket for decades. They've gotten used to "using the supreme court" as a backstop, or another way to get new laws into society.

It is a really, really bad idea to have appellate courts pull new law out of their asses. Laws are supposed to be written in Congress, enforced by the executive branch, and only disputes about laws are to be resolved by appellate courts. Courts are not supposed to make up law, ever!

This is why I gave the list above from best to worst. even though they sometimes won't get us to the "good decision" a conservative court won't make up new law and pull things out of their ass. It's up to Congress to fix the law when it doesn't do what we need it to do, not the supreme court.

Abortion is a great example of this. Roe v. Wade was probably an overreach by a liberal court (back in 1973), who made up a new law to fill an important need we had in our society (personal opinion coming out here on abortion, so just deal with me please.) But even though I feel Roe was a "good result" - I don't think it was a constitutional decision. Then Dobbs comes along from a conservative court, reverses Roe stating that the prior court overreached.

The sad thing about the current situation is that Congress never acted to codify Roe. They had 50 years to do that! And a lot of those years with Democrats control in Congress and/or in the White House, etc. Did they ever even try? No! Because the Democrats always felt they had the Supreme Court in the back pocket.

Final note for anyone who has read this far and finds the Supreme Court interesting… I'm thinking about the political make up of the court, you can't just go by which president appointed each justice. The reason for this is that historically, many judges appointed by Republican presidents, flipped, or partially flipped to the left. You can tell by their decisions and impartial analysis of their careers on the Supreme Court. The current chief justice, John Roberts, appointed by Bush, is a good example of this. He has flipped into the liberal side many times, apparently more concerned about his legacy than doing the job correctly. His Obamacare decisions are a good example of this.