1/ Here are the results of my reader polls on favorite Supreme Court Justices. (Obviously, these are totally unscientific and just for entertainment. Void where prohibited.) I posted the 1st result this morning: Among liberals, the favorite -- by far -- is Chief Justice Roberts. 
2/ Here's the poll on the favorite left-of-center Justice among conservative legal nerds. As predicted above, the answer is Justice Kagan, although it's a less overwhelming result than Roberts. I think Kagan & Roberts are the best writers; may have something to do w/ results.
3/ Next, here's the poll for liberal legal nerds of favorite right-of-center Justices in recent years, not just on current court. More or less a tie among Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy.
4/ I next turned to opinion of Justices on your own side. 1st, among conservatives, who is your favorite conservative? Picking Roberts was a surprising result that doesn't match politics. Not sure what explains it. May ask again some other time to see if replicates.
5/ Finally, among liberals, who is your favorite liberal? More or less a three-way tie between Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
6/ Do these numbers mean anything, or are they just noise? No idea. If they mean anything, results might be most interesting about opposite side favorites: Perhaps the favorites are the best writers who seem most open minded about the other side and sometimes vote that way.
7/ Opinions about own-side favorites were more mixed, which was interesting. Perhaps allegiances there more mixed, with some drawn to writing, some to ideological match, some to attitude, some to methodology. But who knows, may just be noise.
