I did not know this! Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first is a promise to support the Constitution. The second, a judicial oath, is more specific. It requires them, among other things, to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” Haha, they’re just kidding right?
A new study being released on Monday from economists at Yale and Columbia contends that the Supreme Court has in recent decades fallen short of that vow.
The study, called “Ruling for the Rich,” concludes that the wealthy have the wind at their backs before the justices and that a good way to guess the outcome of a case is to follow the money.
The study adds to what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent in June, called “the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”
The study found that the Supreme Court has become deeply polarized in cases pitting the rich against the poor, with Republican appointees far more likely than Democratic ones to side with the wealthy. That is starkly different from the middle of the last century, when appointees of the two parties were statistically indistinguishable on this measure.
The general critique is not new, and it may figure in the drop in public confidence in the court in recent years, as opinion polls show.
In a 2021 book, “Supreme Inequality,” Adam Cohen, an author and former member of The New York Times’s editorial board, argued that “the court’s decisions have lifted up those who are already high and brought down those who are already low.”
In an interview, Mr. Cohen said the new study from the economists covered ground that “some of us have been observing for a long time.” He pointed to Supreme Court decisions amplifying the role of money in politics, weakening public sector labor unions and curtailing federal regulators.
“But it is great to see,” he added, “respected academics crunching the numbers and producing the data to show that this is exactly what has been going on.”
I remember back in 2005 when Alito and Roberts were first nominated, and I was on an organizing call with Sen. Harry Reid. He and many of the activists on the call wanted the opposition to be focused on their stand on abortion rights, and I strongly disagreed. “If you want to win, why concentrate on the single most divisive issue out there?” I said. I suggested they focus instead on the fact that these were two judges who never ruled in favor of working people. Reid said that wouldn’t work.
Hah. See how well that worked out?
