keeps cards close to robe

keeps cards close to robe = not showing people the direction he is thinking.
crafting liberal majorities = building a consensus on the court (there are nine justices, so five is a majority) for a liberal interpretation of a law.

This is going to require a complicated explanation.

There is an expression, "to keep one's cards cl0se to the cuff." That means not to reveal one's plans. In playing the gambling card game of poker, it's essential that the other plays don't know what cards you hold, and to avoid anyone accidentally seeing what cards you hold in your hand, most players keep their cards close to their body while they play. This is often referred to as "keeping your cards close to the cuff," referring to the cuff of the shirt sleeve, and providing a mental image of holding the cards close to oneself so that others cannot see them.

By extension, it has become a metaphor for someone who does not reveal their plans or intentions. So if everyone at a business, for example, knows that there are going to be changes soon, but the boss doesn't let anyone know what changes he plans to make, they would say that he is "playing his cards close to the cuff."

Now, it gets a little more obscure here. The Supreme Court Justice referred to is not letting anyone know his plans, so, normally you would say he is playing his cards close to the cuff. But justices of the court wear a judge's robe when they sit to hear cases, so the person who wrote the headline was trying to be clever, and rather than saying that he is holding his cards close to the cuff, he says he is holding them close to the robe, referring the judge's robe which he wears.

I've never heard the term expressed as "close to the cuff", but there's no reason that it couldn't work.

"keep one's cards close to the chest" is what I've always heard. The switch to 'robes', for obvious reasons, doesn't seem like much of a shift.

Thank you all.