The Supermajority

April 17, 2023
Waldman (The Fight to Vote), president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, delivers a persuasive analysis of the Supreme Court’s 2021–2022 term and how “decades of organized politics” brought it to a “point of judicial extremism and overreach.” During the cultural revolutions of the 1950s and ’60s, chief justice Earl Warren led the court’s efforts to expand and protect civil rights, leading to such landmark decisions as Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona, but also exacerbating tensions between the right and the left as the latter became “enamored of litigation as a driver of social change and came to hold the Supreme Court itself in near-religious reverence.” Eventually, Waldman writes, “intense divisions within Congress spread to judicial nominations and came to be the central fact in how American courts were comprised.” Among more recent rulings, Waldman highlights 2010’s Citizens United, which “remade American politics” to give more influence to the wealthy, and Shelby County v. Holder, which significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. He also delves into the links between the Federalist Society and the three conservative justices appointed by Donald Trump, and takes note of the historical precedents behind the 2022 Dobbs leak, which contributed to a “tense, accusatory, and suspicious” atmosphere within the court as it released other consequential and controversial rulings on gun rights and environmental regulations. Brisk yet detailed, this is a valuable overview of how America’s highest court became such a lightning rod.