The Numbers Don’t Lie There’s a difference between a conservative court and a partisan one. A conservative court applies consistent principles regardless of which party benefits. A partisan court shifts its reasoning to serve one party’s interests. The shadow docket proves which kind of court we have. ...

When Justice Looks Away On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, on a Minneapolis street. The shooting was captured on video. Within days, the Department of Justice announced it would not investigate whether Ross violated Good’s civil rights. Instead, the DOJ launched investigations into Good’s widow, Minnesota’s governor, and the Minneapolis mayor. ...

Court Reform Across Generations Supreme Court reform isn’t a new idea invented by frustrated progressives. It’s a recurring response to judicial overreach that spans American history. 1937: FDR’s court-packing plan threatened to add up to six justices to break conservative obstruction of New Deal programs. The plan failed legislatively but succeeded politically—the Court reversed course. 1960s-70s: Conservative frustration with Warren Court civil rights decisions led to calls for impeachment, jurisdiction stripping, and constitutional amendments. 2020s: Progressive proposals for term limits, court expansion, ethics codes, and jurisdiction stripping respond to the Federalist Society’s capture of the Court. ...

Court Reform Is American Tradition Throughout American history, when the Supreme Court has overreached, threatened democracy, or blocked necessary reforms, presidents and Congress have acted to check judicial power. Thomas Jefferson led the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase and refused to enforce certain court orders. Abraham Lincoln defied the Dred Scott decision and appointed five new justices to ensure the Court would uphold Civil War measures. Franklin Roosevelt threatened court-packing in 1937, forcing the Court to reverse course and uphold New Deal legislation. ...

Corporations as Super-Citizens Citizens United v. FEC (2010) gets all the attention for allowing unlimited corporate political spending. But it’s just one decision in a systematic judicial project to expand corporate power while shrinking worker, consumer, and citizen rights. ...

The Court’s Religion Problem The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has systematically expanded religious liberty for Christians while diminishing everyone else’s rights. 303 Creative (2023): Businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ customers based on religious beliefs. Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022): Public school coaches can lead prayer at school events. Hobby Lobby (2014): Corporations have religious freedom to deny contraception coverage. ...

Democracy Dies in the Shadows The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—emergency orders issued without full briefing, oral argument, or signed opinions—has become a weapon for dismantling rights and enabling executive overreach. Between 2017-2021, the Trump administration filed emergency applications at unprecedented rates, and the conservative majority granted them with alarming frequency. ...

How Republicans Stole Two Supreme Court Seats In March 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court with 293 days remaining in his term. Senate Republicans refused to hold hearings, claiming voters should decide in the upcoming election. In September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died with just 46 days before the election. Senate Republicans rushed through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in record time—just 30 days from nomination to confirmation. ...

The Day the Voting Rights Act Died On June 25, 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 5-4 conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder, effectively gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the most important civil rights legislation in American history. Within hours, Texas announced it would implement the nation’s most restrictive voter ID law—a law that had been blocked under federal preclearance. Three days later, Alabama passed strict photo ID requirements. ...

When Words Ring Hollow Chief Justice John Roberts released his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary, and it’s a remarkable document—not for what it says, but for what it so carefully avoids saying. Roberts chose to focus on Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Declaration of Independence, waxing eloquent about America’s founding principles and the judiciary’s sacred duty to decide cases “faithfully and impartially.” It’s a beautiful sentiment. It’s also utterly disconnected from the reality of the Supreme Court he leads. ...

Democracy’s Darkest Irony Here’s a fact that should alarm every American who believes in majority rule: six of the nine current Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote when they first ran for office—and confirmed by senators representing a minority of the American population. This isn’t democracy. It’s minority rule with a lifetime appointment. ...

No Single Fix Will Save Us When confronting the Supreme Court’s crisis of legitimacy, reformers often advocate for a single solution: “Just add term limits.” “Just expand the Court.” “Just pass ethics rules.” But here’s the uncomfortable truth: no single reform—however well-designed—will fix a Supreme Court captured by the Federalist Society, funded by dark money, staffed with justices who accept millions in gifts, grant presidents immunity for crimes, dismantle gun safety laws, and overturn precedents based on ideology. ...

Federal Agency or White Nationalist Content Mill? The Department of Homeland Security—the federal agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorism and extremism—has turned its official social media accounts into a distribution network for racist memes, white nationalist imagery, and content celebrated by neo-Nazis. This isn’t hyperbole. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch documented how “the agency and top Trump administration officials have ramped up their promotion of white nationalist or anti-immigrant social media posts” throughout 2024 and 2025. ...

When Access Journalism Becomes Propaganda CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford recently declared that the Supreme Court corruption narrative is “dangerous” and “patently false”. Her defense of Justices Thomas and Alito: the Court is simply “conservative,” and criticism of its decisions doesn’t equal corruption. This is gaslighting disguised as legal analysis. ...

The United States Is the Outlier Among established democracies with independent judiciaries and strong rule of law, the United States stands virtually alone in granting supreme court justices lifetime appointments with no mandatory retirement age. Every other comparable democracy has recognized what America refuses to acknowledge: unlimited judicial tenure concentrates too much power in too few hands for too long. ...

How the Roberts Court Dismantled Accountability in One Term In a single Supreme Court term spanning 2022-2024, six unelected justices fundamentally rewrote the balance of power in American government. Three decisions stand out for their devastating impact on democratic accountability and the rule of law: Trump v. United States (July 2024): Presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official acts Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (June 2024): Federal agencies can no longer interpret ambiguous statutes—courts will instead New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (June 2022): Gun regulations must match 18th-century historical traditions, not modern public safety needs ...

The Power Congress Forgot It Had Article III of the Constitution gives Congress an extraordinary power over the Supreme Court—one that could neutralize the Court’s most extreme decisions without adding a single justice, imposing term limits, or amending the Constitution. It’s called jurisdiction stripping, and it works like this: Congress can remove the Supreme Court’s power to hear certain categories of cases, preventing the Court from imposing its will on issues where it has overreached. ...

Two Justices, Millions in Gifts, Zero Consequences In December 2024, after 20 months of investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a devastating 95-page report documenting what it called an “ethical crisis at the Supreme Court.” The findings were damning: Justice Clarence Thomas “accepted lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court for almost his entire tenure as a justice,” with gifts of a “number, value, and extravagance” that have “no comparison in modern American history.” ...

Six Justices, One Organization, Billionaire Funding Six of the nine current Supreme Court justices are current or former members of the Federalist Society: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. This isn’t coincidence. It’s the culmination of a decades-long, billionaire-funded project to capture the federal judiciary and implement a conservative legal agenda that couldn’t win at the ballot box. ...