Supreme Court Increasingly Favors the Rich, Economists Say

[In It to Win It]

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Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first, required of all federal officials, 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.”

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.

Roberts less than a week ago: "Those of us in the Third Branch must continue to decide the cases before us according to our oath, doing equal right to the poor and to the rich"

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/u...

— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) 2026-01-05T15:15:14.486Z