Photograph © Eva Deitch Richard Kreitner is a contributer to The Nation and the author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union (2020) and Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery (2025).

Introduction

Richard Kreitner

It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which the American republic’s current set of staggering problems and seemingly intractable crises can and should be blamed on a single institution: the United States Supreme Court.

Other actors, of course, bear responsibility as well: a highly distractible mainstream media, corporate kleptocrats, a generation or two of now-discredited neoconservatives and neoliberals pushing domestic and foreign policy initiatives (the drug war, invading Iraq) that it was clear at the time were unjust and unworkable and indeed have not worked out at all (oops).

Yet none of them would have been in a position to see their will so consequentially enacted had they not been empowered by the Supreme Court, which, over the last forty or so years, has green-lighted media consolidation and conglomeration, hollowing out the local and independent journalism on which democracy depends; turned corporations into persons (abracadabra!), opening the campaign-finance spigots and flooding the public square with dark money; and—still shocking to contemplate—halted the counting of ballots in a presidential election so as to deliver victory to the candidate preferred by a bare majority of its members, with spiraling effects for America and the world that a quarter-century later have not yet ceased. Not to mention rulings that have hollowed out labor unions; overturned hard-earned protections for the right to vote; and annulled the right to have an abortion it had itself previously recognized as inviolable. Most recently (as of this writing), the Court decided that the president is above and beyond the reach of the law—a decision it is no exaggeration to say demolished in one blow an essential pillar of the constitutional system. It is terrifying to think that the conservative justices on the Court are not yet done with their labors. If she holds on as long as Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, Amy Coney Barrett will still be hearing cases in 2059.

It is both freshly infuriating and strangely comforting, at such a moment, to cast a long look back through the history of the Supreme Court and see just how long the questions and issues raised by the justices’ recent interventions have been the subject of conversation and debate. The Nation has been airing and reporting on such debates since its founding three months after the end of the Civil War, when it was clear the Court would play a vital role shaping the nation that emerged from the ashes. Covering more than a century and a half, the articles, columns, letters, and editorials included in these pages contain eloquent critiques of the Court’s trespasses on democracy, its selective application of supposed constitutional principles, and persistent mockery of the justice’s half-hearted pleas that the Court stays out of politics and simply applies the Constitution to the issue is at hand. As more than one contributor points out, the Court often claims to be powerless when it comes to protecting individual liberties but somehow finds justification to act as an almighty sovereign when property rights or corporate interests are at stake.

Photograph © Eva Deitch Richard Kreitner is a contributer to The Nation and the author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union (2020) and Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery (2025).

Introduction

Richard Kreitner

It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which the American republic’s current set of staggering problems and seemingly intractable crises can and should be blamed on a single institution: the United States Supreme Court.

Other actors, of course, bear responsibility as well: a highly distractible mainstream media, corporate kleptocrats, a generation or two of now-discredited neoconservatives and neoliberals pushing domestic and foreign policy initiatives (the drug war, invading Iraq) that it was clear at the time were unjust and unworkable and indeed have not worked out at all (oops).

Yet none of them would have been in a position to see their will so consequentially enacted had they not been empowered by the Supreme Court, which, over the last forty or so years, has green-lighted media consolidation and conglomeration, hollowing out the local and independent journalism on which democracy depends; turned corporations into persons (abracadabra!), opening the campaign-finance spigots and flooding the public square with dark money; and—still shocking to contemplate—halted the counting of ballots in a presidential election so as to deliver victory to the candidate preferred by a bare majority of its members, with spiraling effects for America and the world that a quarter-century later have not yet ceased. Not to mention rulings that have hollowed out labor unions; overturned hard-earned protections for the right to vote; and annulled the right to have an abortion it had itself previously recognized as inviolable. Most recently (as of this writing), the Court decided that the president is above and beyond the reach of the law—a decision it is no exaggeration to say demolished in one blow an essential pillar of the constitutional system. It is terrifying to think that the conservative justices on the Court are not yet done with their labors. If she holds on as long as Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, Amy Coney Barrett will still be hearing cases in 2059.

It is both freshly infuriating and strangely comforting, at such a moment, to cast a long look back through the history of the Supreme Court and see just how long the questions and issues raised by the justices’ recent interventions have been the subject of conversation and debate. The Nation has been airing and reporting on such debates since its founding three months after the end of the Civil War, when it was clear the Court would play a vital role shaping the nation that emerged from the ashes. Covering more than a century and a half, the articles, columns, letters, and editorials included in these pages contain eloquent critiques of the Court’s trespasses on democracy, its selective application of supposed constitutional principles, and persistent mockery of the justice’s half-hearted pleas that the Court stays out of politics and simply applies the Constitution to the issue is at hand. As more than one contributor points out, the Court often claims to be powerless when it comes to protecting individual liberties but somehow finds justification to act as an almighty sovereign when property rights or corporate interests are at stake.