Does the Supreme Court Favor the Rich?
6th January 2026
Today’s New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court’s decisions are increasingly tilted toward the interests of the rich, and suggesting that this may play a role in rising economic inequality.
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The study, “Ruling for the Rich: The Supreme Court Over Time,” by Andrea Prat, Fiona Scott Morton, and Jacob Spitz, was posted as an NBER working paper, and has not yet been peer-reviewed or (to my knowledge) accepted anywhere for publication. But that did not stop it from getting a the full-article treatment in the NYT.
Having looked at the study, I don’t think it does much of anything to reliably substantiate its claims. It is both conceptually muddled and poorly executed. At most it shows that (surprise!) Republican Supreme Court nominees have become more conservative over time (a point I made to the Times), but that is hardly a revelation.
Of course, to the New York Times (and other Voices of the Crust), anything that ‘favors the rich’, whether deserved or not, whether benefitting the country or not, is to be deplored.