That’s why impartiality and liberal/conservative are different axes. A conservative judge may favor an analytical framework that creates an interpretation of existing laws that favors employers. As long as they consistently use that same analytical framework for other types of cases, they’d remain impartial despite being heavily conservative.

The point being, judges being impartial isn’t all we should care about. Some analytical frameworks are just plain bad and we shouldn’t be giving jobs to judges who use them.