Supreme Court Increasingly Favors the Rich, Economists Say

[In It to Win It]

NYT - Gift Link

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

[Uncle Joe]

1. That's what "Citizens United" was all about, and that was just the latest decision.

One can't argue that "money is speech" without de facto stating that some people have more speech than others.

Thanks for the thread In It to Win It

[Rebl2]

2. Really

I hadn’t noticed 🙄.

[unblock]

3. See now, the poor have the same right as the rich to buy politicians and laws and loopholes and government contracts

It's just that, gee, somehow, the rich are much better at it.

[Ocelot II]

4. "The law, in its majestic equality, punishes the rich and poor alike

for stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.”

[Kid Berwyn]

5. No wonder they don't report the money they get from rich people and organizations!

From the Rank-Has-Its-Privilege$-Works-for-Them-in-Robes-Too Department:

131 federal judges failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had financial interest



131 federal judges failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had financial interest: report

BY MONIQUE BEALS
The Hill (from WSJ)- 09/28/21

One hundred and thirty-one federal judges oversaw court cases involving companies in which they or their family members owned stock, according to a new investigation.

Those judges violated U.S. law and judicial ethics as they failed to recuse themselves from a total of 685 court cases in which they may have had a conflict of interest, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal found.

In those cases, about two-thirds of the rulings were in favor of the financial interests of the judge, the Journal reported.

Snip…

After the Journal notified the judges of its findings, 56 of them began to alert parties involved in 329 of the lawsuits of their conflict of interest.

Continues…

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/574244-131-federal-judges-failed-to-recuse-themselves-from-cases-in-which

[OldBaldy1701E]

6. No, really??

Where are my pearls!

(Come on, no one in this biased country was unaware of the bias in it. There are just two camps, those who suffer from said bias, and those who enjoy favoritism from it. That has been the situation for many decades now.)

[struggle4progress]

7. The poor just don't tip as generously

[Mysterian]

8. Ya' don't say, Captain Obvious!

Maybe "money equals speech" gave you a hint.

[Initech]

9. Welllllllll duh!!!

Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were hand-selected by Fox and Heritage to fuck with cases favoring the rich. And that wretched network weaponized any opposition to their selection.