The Supreme Court Lives in Fox News' America
The Supreme Court has never been a democratic institution in any robust sense. From its inception, it has been insulated from popular pressure, staffed by elites, and oriented toward protecting property and hierarchy. For most of its history, it functioned as a brake on democratic change rather than an engine of it. And yet, over time, even this deeply conservative body proved somewhat responsive to shifts in public understanding. Its most infamous failures, such as Plessy v. Ferguson, were not undone by sudden moral awakenings among justices, but by a transformation in social reality that made the old order increasingly untenable. Brown v. Board of Education reflected not judicial heroism in isolation, but a Court belatedly catching up to a world that had already begun to move.
What most distinguishes the present Supreme Court is not merely its conservatism, or even its willingness to roll back settled rights. It is the degree to which the conservative majority appears severed from shared facts altogether. This is not accidental. The modern conservative legal movement, organized and disciplined through institutions like the Federalist Society, has spent decades constructing a parallel professional universe. Within it, judges are selected, rewarded, and elevated precisely because they resist evolving norms and remain ideologically pure. Generous funding, elite networking, and guaranteed career advancement have created a judiciary that does not need to persuade the public—or even understand it—in order to wield power.
A Supreme Court that does not share a common factual world with the people it governs is not merely conservative. It is untethered from democratic reality. When law is built atop myth, and adjudication proceeds from narrative rather than evidence, constitutional guarantees become contingent and fragile. The danger is not confined to any one doctrine or term. It lies in the normalization of a judiciary that no longer sees, hears, or understands the country as it actually exists—and therefore cannot meaningfully claim to judge it.
Entire essay at the source
What most distinguishes the present Supreme Court is not merely its conservatism, or even its willingness to roll back settled rights. It is the degree to which the conservative majority appears severed from shared facts altogether. This is not accidental. The modern conservative legal movement, organized and disciplined through institutions like the Federalist Society, has spent decades constructing a parallel professional universe. Within it, judges are selected, rewarded, and elevated precisely because they resist evolving norms and remain ideologically pure. Generous funding, elite networking, and guaranteed career advancement have created a judiciary that does not need to persuade the public—or even understand it—in order to wield power.
A Supreme Court that does not share a common factual world with the people it governs is not merely conservative. It is untethered from democratic reality. When law is built atop myth, and adjudication proceeds from narrative rather than evidence, constitutional guarantees become contingent and fragile. The danger is not confined to any one doctrine or term. It lies in the normalization of a judiciary that no longer sees, hears, or understands the country as it actually exists—and therefore cannot meaningfully claim to judge it.
Entire essay at the source
