You don't actually seem to be disagreeing with me, in that you don't seem to be making an argument that procedural decisions are less ideological than merits decisions. You just seem to pointing to an alternative ideological goal to the immediate policy goal, and pointing out that it is possible for ideology to be focussed on something other than what the media headlines of a case are about (which is a point I don't disagree with, though for simplicity in the context of the post I was responding to isn't one I wanted to raise.)
My disagreement was with the following part of what you said earlier:
...if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
My point is that the connection between the specific outcome of the case, and the outcomes that the justices care about, tends to be weaker for procedural decisions than merits decisions. Therefore we should treat procedural decisions differently from merits decisions. In particular, we should be more cautious about assuming that the underlying ideology matches the obvious headline.
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You don't actually seem to be disagreeing with me, in that you don't seem to be making an argument that procedural decisions are less ideological than merits decisions. You just seem to pointing to an alternative ideological goal to the immediate policy goal, and pointing out that it is possible for ideology to be focussed on something other than what the media headlines of a case are about (which is a point I don't disagree with, though for simplicity in the context of the post I was responding to isn't one I wanted to raise.)
My disagreement was with the following part of what you said earlier:
...if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
My point is that the connection between the specific outcome of the case, and the outcomes that the justices care about, tends to be weaker for procedural decisions than merits decisions. Therefore we should treat procedural decisions differently from merits decisions. In particular, we should be more cautious about assuming that the underlying ideology matches the obvious headline.