Just admit it: The Supreme Court is political
Let’s face it, the Supreme Court has dug itself into a hole, and it just keeps digging.
Source excerpt
Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, right, and Elena Kagan, testify during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Writing about the Supreme Court almost 50 years ago, famed political scientist Robert Dahl said that “To consider the Supreme Court of the United States strictly as a legal institution is to underestimate its significance in the American political system.
For it is also a political institution. … As a political institution, the court is highly unusual, not least because Americans are not quite willing to accept the fact that it is a political institution and not quite capable of denying it.”
The result, Dahl argued, is “that frequently we take both positions at once.”
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