The Supremes hard right turn

Janna Brancolini, Daily Beast -  A new study has bolstered a scathing dissent from liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that warned the court appeared to favor the rich.

The study, published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, investigated whether the Supreme Court has contributed to rising income inequality by ruling in favor of policies that favor wealthy parties.

Its authors—two academics from Columbia University in New York and one from Yale University—found that in cases pitting the rich against the poor, Republican appointees were far more likely than their Democratic colleagues to side with the wealthier party.

Back in 1953, Democratic and Republican appointees were statistically indistinguishable on the issue, with justices appointed by members of both parties favoring the rich in 45 percent of cases on average.

By 2022, the average Republican-appointed justice was voting in favor of the rich a whopping 70 percent of the time.

The average Democratic justice cast a “pro-rich” vote—which was defined as a vote that would directly shift resources to the party that was more likely to be wealthy, including votes that supported businesses over consumers or workers—just 35 percent of the time.