GARLAND LITE:

Specifically, Justice Kennedy did not join the Court's liberal bloc in a single 5-4 decision in the entire 2017-2018 term. [...]

Gorsuch's views look even more "liberal" than Kennedy's when you consider their respective approaches in the blockbuster case of Carpenter v. United States. In that ruling, the Supreme Court held that a warrantless government search of cellphone location data violated the Fourth Amendment. "We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information," the Court said.

Technically, Kennedy and Gorsuch both dissented from the Court's 5-4 judgment in Carpenter. But the content of their respective dissents was entirely different. Kennedy dissented because he thought the Court should have let the warrantless searches stand. "Individuals have no Fourth Amendment interests in business records which are possessed, owned, and controlled by a third party," Kennedy wrote. Cellphone records "are no different from the many other kinds of business records the Government has a lawful right to obtain by compulsory process."

Gorsuch, by contrast, dissented because he favors "a more traditional Fourth Amendment approach" that asks "if a house, paper or effect was yours under law." Cellphone records, Gorsuch observed, "could qualify as [your] papers" for Fourth Amendment purposes.

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