“Those of us in the third branch must continue to decide the cases before us according to our oath,” he wrote, “doing equal right to the poor and to the rich, and performing all of our duties faithfully and impartially under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
A new study shows that that is plainly balderdash.
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.
It is called Ruling for the rich; The Supreme Court over time.
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.
“The results reveal a steady increase in polarization, mostly due to Republican appointees whose decisions rise from about 50 percent pro-rich share to a 70 percent pro-rich share over the course of 70 years,” the study’s authors, Andrea Prat, a Columbia economics professor, Jacob Spitz, a Columbia PhD student, Fiona Scott Morton, a Yale economics professor, and wrote.
No wonder Roberts brought it up.
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