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Notes -
You are missing some of the more interesting recent ones.
I recommend going to to https://www.scotusblog.com/ and look up the cases that seem to be big culture-war-y cases. Go to the amicus briefs. Find the briefs written by the parties that opposed the ultimate outcome of the case and read them, or go to their websites and read their press releases after the decision came down. (Perhaps avoid the more zealous activist groups, but you can generally expect the ACLU or someone with a similar track record and expertise to show up and opine). Note whether they [the legal experts] construe it as a limp-wristed defensive action or not.
If you want to get really into the weeds, note also the practical outcomes of the case. If the court says "states can do X," note how many states are trying or might want to do X. If the court says "states cannot do X [if they do Y]" note how many states that impacts as well. If you prefer thinking in strictly partisan terms, note whether they are blue/red/purple. Note which institutions they strengthen and which they weaken. Compare the current precedent with the old precedent. Ask yourself what behavior the decisions make easier and more difficult.
And then at this point you might as well write it all up and get an AAQC here!
I'm not really a law/judges guy, I think detailed investigations of individual cases should be left to lawyers. I'm trying to compare ideologies around the world on a high level.
Isn't the burden of proof on OP to show how powerful the conservative Catholics are, the literati, the counter-elite? Where are their wins? What is he gesturing at, that's what I want to know. I don't see any power projection. MAGA can project power, deportations are active. The neocons project power, wars are active. They push forward, they represent a significant change to the status quo. You can see and hear and sense power projection on the TV, you don't need to go to scotusblog to find out about it.
Is he saying that conservative Catholics are instrumental in mass deportations or the war on Iran? That would surprise me! The point OP made is that the conservative Catholics were a counter-elite, they were running all these universities and books and so that means they're winning very slowly... but nobody ever heard of this Senior guy. That's my point. I don't think universities and books or Mr Senior matter if people haven't heard them and we can't observe any clear, significant effects from their activism.
The Warren Court projected power, they made schools desegregate, they made schools bus kids around, they were part of the process that ended with 101st Airborne marching around Arkansas with bayonets fixed, enforcing a new social policy. Or the due process revolution, giving criminals a leg up, making police read out these rights. Abortion legalized nationwide. That's power.
A judge in Kansas decided that schools were segregated and so mandated that so much money be spent on them that white students would be brought back by how nice they'd be. Billions were spent on planetariums, swimming pools. He doubled property taxes. That's power!
More recently: Gay marriage! It's a thing all of a sudden, country-wide. Changing a fundamental social rite.
Now you can say that's just banning things, just like the cases I mentioned. But the Warren Court and some judge in Kansas were banning or enforcing actively and transformatively. The conservative Catholics on the Court don't have that same pushing power to them. There's no elaborate anti-discrimination regime that puts money in the hands of Catholics, is there? What about setting up a lawfare regime that crushes abortion? Why not make abortion providers meet a standard of safety so rigorous that they're effectively put out of business: they have to use surgery so delicate there's never any scarring?
That pushing power doesn't exist and I don't need to read legal arguments to observe that, I can look and check a statistic about facts on the ground.
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